Telerik RadControls for WinForms for Windows

User Reviews

• Nice looking and highly customizable WinForms controls from telerik

  mvv970February 4, 2008

  Pros

  One of the main reasons I got interested in RadControls for WinForms is that I?ve used previously telerik?s famous control for ASP.NET. Even though they appear on the market a bit late they definitely have something interesting and unique to offer. <p>R.a.d. controls for WinForms are highly skin-able and they have all this Vista-looking animations and other advanced 2D graphics effects ? it really looks more like WP then Windows Forms. Not that surprisingly, they call their graphics layer - Telerik Presentation Framework (TPF). It seems they have also taken (from WPF) the idea for the tree of visual elements, including value storing in a bag instead to local fields. Another interesting feature is that all the controls are built from atomic parts they call ?Elements? so the looks and some aspects of the behavior are customized at this element level and independently from the control itself - which is very good for you if you choose to extend TPF. Telerik also provides a standalone app called ?Visual Style Builder? which is a utility for your convenience, so you can build new themes or customize existing ones with few clicks here and there ? even for your custom controls.<p>Of course, telerik has done good job but even though TPF is pushing the limits of GDI(+) and, it can't compete with WPF. But it comes as close to this advanced rendering as GDI(+) allows. <p>It can be the perfect choice - if you are not willing to go with .net 3.0 ? actually Windows form in still the recommended platform for the business-type applications. Also as the architecture of the controls seems very similar to the one in WPF, it should be easier to port any apps to WPF, later on.<p>In the latest versions they?ve seen to have added alternative to all VS2005 toolbox controls and more importantly ? a very well performing data grid. This way you can achieve a consistent looking, WPF-like, but a highly scalable solution ? you only need .net 2.0.

  Cons

  The newer version is truly better! They seem to have new stuff every 4 months, and you have to upgrade your apps from time to in order to benefit from this.

  Summary

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