Hi, Hashcode!

I want to ask the people who make the interfaces on WinForms how they are doing and how easy it is for them to live.

What is the actual problem? The WinForms interface developer has three ways:

  1. Be content with standard controls.
  2. Write your own.
  3. Download / buy third-party.

The first version, disappears as soon as you begin to peer into the standard controls provided by visual studio. No, personally, I have nothing against well-combed minimalistic applications using only native buttons, combo boxes, etc., but from personal experience, every year after the release of the 2007 office, users are turning up their nose more and more from 'boring' components.

I am ready to write my own controls in the case of a long-term project, when it is really worth it. In other cases, I would like ready-made solutions.

The hopes were pinned on third-party components, but as I understood it, they were either paid for or stuck together in a torn-eye style. Maybe I missed something, and in the free access there are a lot of good collections of controls? After all, a popular technology, there must be solutions.

As an answer to the question, the link to the free collection of controls or the phrase “WinForms Meterv” will suit me perfectly.

    4 answers 4

    According to my IMHO, I would recommend a smooth transition to WPF. Standard integration capabilities of WPF and WinForms in one application allow you to do this literally “smoothly” and painlessly.

    What is the advantage of WPF? In the context of your question, it’s quite easy to do non-dull components. Firstly, it's nice that it is easier to do it yourself, secondly, this also leads to the fact that the community is actively creating them under free licenses, and there is no need for someone to pay or suffer the most.

      As it turned out, the codeproject has a very good collection of free controls. Of course, they are inferior to paid solutions, but with diligent search and proper use they start to look very decent, and that the most important thing is to combine with each other.

      Actually the collection itself.

      • Please correct the link, interesting. Your leads to "The top 50 Articles on Desktop Development". - tsul

      The appearance and unpleasant bugs of Visual Studio 2010 discourage any desire to switch to WPF. We use paid components. MapXtreme for maps, DevExpress for everything else.

      • 3
        You are using some other VS 2010 than everyone else. - Maxim Kamalov
      • one
        With the fact that VS2008 worked better, all our employees agree. The only thing better than VS2010 is that it does not crash when compiling code with large nesting of operators in one method in C ++. - Modus

      Standard very much even nothing, for creation of the strong knowledge of hierarchy kontrolov .NET are necessary. About others - The network is full of free and fairly high-quality controls, google yes sursforge and a code sample to help ...

      • 2
        Honestly, the best of the free ones that I found are separate sets of buttons, separate checkboxes and other small things. And characteristically, each such collection will have its own rich style, which makes it impossible to use them in one program. - Jofsey