Windows Devexpress controls not designed to be used?

Question

I am looking for a general opinion here. My team and I are working on a Windows project that uses DevExpress Winform controls. After working on them for more than 6 months, more than half of us were left with the feeling that DevExpress is not only overly complex and unintuitive (compared to standard Windows controls) for programming, but they are also seriously damaged in some projects of the situation.

Anyone who has used controls in production projects wants to add?

Answer 1

I have been working with DevExpress controls for about a year (mostly XtraGrid).

We switched to XtraGrid because the standard WinForms network management tools ended very early in the development of my application (application for scientific tools).

I agree with your comment that their controls are somewhat complex and not intuitive. There are so many functions that it is often difficult to wade through all the properties and understand how they interact.

I do not agree , "they are also seriously damaged in some design situations" - my experience was the opposite. The overall design seems so powerful and thoughtful that almost anything is possible (although I often need guidance from technical support to implement the functions I need).

Excellent technical support (24-hour rotation on all issues) is key here - if I can’t understand how to do what I want relatively quickly, I will just send a request for support.

It was a change in my work habits - I generally prefer to understand myself, but worked well on my project.

All in all, I am very glad that we went with DevExpress.

Answer 2

Working at DevExpress, I think our control architecture is very good, and the controls are pretty intuitive. However, I also understand that the learning curve can be somehow difficult just because the controls provide many functions. Many functions lead to complexity, and it seems impossible to create rich functional controls that are easy to use. I can only guarantee that our support team will be happy to help if you decide to use our controls ... Anyway, this is your choice.

Answer 3

Using the DevExpress controls, I assume you are talking about XtraGrid.

XtraGrid has no objects for individual rows and cells, forcing you to use Row Handles along with many methods in the GridView to do anything with the grid.
This makes the grid more scalable; XtraGrid will run much faster on large data sets than its competitors, which have objects for each row and cell (I say from personal experience).

I had no problems with XtraEditors; once you get used to the RepositoryItem class and the Properties property (which are necessary for embedding), they are not difficult to use.