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The Best Tools for Windows Forms Development (Controls)

  1. Janus GridEX

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  1. Janus GridEX

  2. The .NET Control DataGridView is almost sufficient for 60% of your needs (see Rules To Better Windows Forms). If you still want more we recommend Janus GridEX. The GridEX Control supports hierarchical display of data and permits you to create effective "Outlook like" user interfaces while easing development and maintenance time. The functionality provided by the control allows you to display, edit, sort, group, filter, manipulate, summarize, preview and print your data. Standalone MaskEdit, MultiColumn Combo, and UpDown controls are also included.

    Advantages of Janus GridEX:

    • GridEX supports binding to hierarchical DataSets including built-In Grouping (see Figure1)
    • Card View with GridLines and Innerspacing (see Figure2)
    • User Friendly Designer (see Figure3)
    • Includes a good Documentation

    Disadvantage:

    • GridEX doesn't support IDataErrorInfo.


    Figure1: Binding to Hierarchical DataSets including Grouping.


    Figure2: Janus GridEX Card View with GridLines and Innerspacing.


    Figure3: Change the Properties and more in the GridEX Designer.

    Janus GridEX Details Leaving SSW Web Site


    Other Grids that we recommend are:

    2. Developer Express XtraGrid

    Advantages:
    • Built-in Grouping
    • Full reporting control
    • Top Performance by handling lots of data. See performance comparisation with the Grids from Janus, Infragistic and Devexpress. It shows that XtraGrid has a good performance by loading Datas into the Grid and Filtering and it is the fastest by Sorting and Grouping.
    • Skin technology lets you specify the overall painting scheme for the control
    • Source Code is included
    Disadvantage:
    • Documentation could be better.

    Developer Express XtraGrid Details Leaving SSW Web Site


    3. Infragistics Wingrid

    Advantages:
    • Support for IDataErrorInfo which displays an error message and tooltip
    • Merge of consecutive cells with the same values so they appear as one cell (less repetition by displaying Data in Wingrid)
    Disadvantages:
    • The Documentation is poor, which makes it hard to implement for developers
    • Unlogical Method/Property names

    Infragistics Wingrid Details Leaving SSW Web Site


    4. ComponentOne True DBGrid

    Advantages:
    • Good Performance
    • XP Themes support
    Disadvantages:
    • Unlogical Method/Property names
    • Hard to use in combination with .NET Grids

    ComponentOne True DBGrid Details Leaving SSW Web Site

Acknowledgements

Adam Cogan
Lionel Mischler