Any .Net controls you'd recommend?

[Jim Hubbard]

I have found one .Net control that I just love......DotNetBar. But, I
haven't found a plethora of great controls or class libraries (like I had
with my VB 6).

What am I missing? (No spam please. I'm looking for controls that you use
in your own projects that you like.)

Please include links to the sites if you have them. (DotNetBar is at
http://www.devcomponents.com/dotnetbar/ )

I miss having a large library of cool controls that make RAD programming as
easy as it used to be in VB 6.

IMHO, Microsoft really screwed up with VB.Net in the first 2 iterations.
They abandoned millions of part-time programmers and destroyed a lucrative
software market that targeted part-time-programmers and Microsoft products.
But, why not? I mean, Visual Basic 6 programmers were only the largest
group of programmers in the world. Who needs THAT?

I am glad to see that, in Visual Basic 2005, Microsoft is trying to get back
what they screwed up. And, they are making a good first stab at it.

Unfortunately, I don't think they'll ever regain the status they once held
with the VB market. People just don't forget it when you toss them aside
like so much trash. Go figure.....

Anyway......still trying to regain the RAD experience with MS products. So,
send links if you got 'em.

Thanks!

 

[Ken Halter]

I have found one .Net control that I just love......DotNetBar. But, I
haven't found a plethora of great controls or class libraries (like I had
with my VB 6).

What am I missing? (No spam please. I'm looking for controls that you
use in your own projects that you like.)

Please include links to the sites if you have them. (DotNetBar is at
http://www.devcomponents.com/dotnetbar/ )

I miss having a large library of cool controls that make RAD programming
as easy as it used to be in VB 6.

IMHO, Microsoft really screwed up with VB.Net in the first 2 iterations.
They abandoned millions of part-time programmers and destroyed a lucrative
software market that targeted part-time-programmers and Microsoft
products. But, why not? I mean, Visual Basic 6 programmers were only the
largest group of programmers in the world. Who needs THAT?

We won't go there ;-)

I am glad to see that, in Visual Basic 2005, Microsoft is trying to get
back what they screwed up. And, they are making a good first stab at it.

Unfortunately, I don't think they'll ever regain the status they once held
with the VB market. People just don't forget it when you toss them aside
like so much trash. Go figure.....

That's for darned sure. When I think of what happened to VB6, it instantly
makes me think of sand castles... no matter how cool the app (or castle) is,
when the next tide rolls in, it's gone.... even the ones below (if they're
built on a beach)

Think of your code as you read the quote below <g>

"Sand sculpture is for the here and the now. It is transient and temporary"
http://www.sandsculpture.co.uk/

Anyway......still trying to regain the RAD experience with MS products.
So, send links if you got 'em.

Thanks!

fwiw, these 2 companies produce some very nice controls. I'm still doing
100% VB6 stuff (just starting to eval .Net) but the suites come with both
..Net and ActiveX components (if you get the "whole shabang") imo, Developer
Express has the best site/service but ComponentOne has the grids I like
so...

ComponentOne Studio®
http://www.componentone.com/

Developer Express
http://www.devexpress.com/

They're both a bit pricey for personal use but should be a piece of cake for
"company sized" budgets. I just saw the price of the DotNetBar and it ain't
cheap either so it looks like you're ready to spend a few pennies <g>

Here's DevExpress's XtraNavBar Suite... $99 bucks and comes with full
source.
http://www.devexpress.com/Products/NET/XtraNavBar/

I thought I saw some freeware .Net stuff on that site as well but can't find
it now.... I can only find an ActiveX

XpressFree Library
http://www.devexpress.com/Products/ActiveX/XFreeLib/

 

[Guest]

http://www.infragistics.com

 

[Yosh]

http://www.janusys.com/controls/

These guys rock!

Yosh

 

[Jim Hubbard]

We won't go there ;-)

I tried to stay away.....really I did. If you google "Jim Hubbard" and
"vb.net" in the groups you'll find enough rants to last a lifetime. LOL

That's for darned sure. When I think of what happened to VB6, it instantly
makes me think of sand castles... no matter how cool the app (or castle)
is, when the next tide rolls in, it's gone.... even the ones below (if
they're built on a beach)

Think of your code as you read the quote below <g>

"Sand sculpture is for the here and the now. It is transient and
temporary"
http://www.sandsculpture.co.uk/

Well........this is leading to a bad place.....the real reason Microsoft
rolled in the tide and the lies they told to make it seem like they gave a
damn.

All that is "water under the bridge" so to speak. What matters now is that
they have realized how bad the fkd up this whole thing. So bad, in fact,
that they feel the need to GIVE AWAY Express editions of the 2005 .Net
product line.

They'll never get back the ease of use of VB 6 (or the programmer loyalty
they once had) because of the very nature of .Net, but the newest .Net
offering is a hell of a lot better than the first 2 iterations.

If you want to try the free Express editions, you can download them at
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/ . The Visual Basic 2005 edition
is getting back to the ease-of-use of VB 6 - but its not there yet.

The biggest thing missing is the thousands of controls that used to be
available in VB6 - as pure .Net controls. I think control developers saw
the devastation that Microsoft's change had on the VB community and chose
not to develop for a community that was disappearing. Can you blame them?

Maybe it'll come back......but not before Microsoft does some serious work
on the whole issue of programmer loyalty. That's gonna be a tough sell when
the whole reason for .Net was for Microsoft's plans for
software-as-a-service, and NOT for the developer needs. (DAMN! I knew I
could stay away from this......)

fwiw, these 2 companies produce some very nice controls. I'm still doing
100% VB6 stuff (just starting to eval .Net) but the suites come with both
.Net and ActiveX components (if you get the "whole shabang") imo,
Developer Express has the best site/service but ComponentOne has the grids
I like so...

ComponentOne Studio®
http://www.componentone.com/

Developer Express
http://www.devexpress.com/

Sweet tools! Thanks for the link!

 

[Jim Hubbard]

http://www.infragistics.com

These guys have ruled for years. They really have their act together.

Now, if they only made a development language........

 

[Mike]

These guys have ruled for years. They really have their act together.

Now, if they only made a development language........

Okay - damn, I'll bite...
What's your deal with C# and .Net? I was programming with VB before it was
publically available up until C# was released, and IMHO I think C# and .Net
is a huge step forward in just about every direction. 90% of VB controls
were shovel-ware -- mostly wrappers around Win32 that you don't need anymore
(or never needed) because most of it is in the framework now in a nicer
form. The forementioned controls in this thread (and others) are great -
well beyond what was available in VB. VB was cool, for sure, and still has
a little ease-of-use over VS2003/5, but I think the tradeoffs are really
worth it. (Of course, I'm complaining about (lacking) .Net2.0/1.1 interop on
another thread, but you wouldn't expect a VB program to run with the wrong
copy of VBRUN.DLL or VB to produce code for a previous runttime either - but
I expect more now...)

m

 

[Jim Hubbard]

Okay - damn, I'll bite...
What's your deal with C# and .Net?

No problem with C#. I am not a C/C++/C# programmer......never liked the
syntax. Just a personal thing.

As far as .Net......IMHO, it was an answer to JAVA, it consolidated
Microsoft resources to (mostly) a single set of classes instead of 4/5
development languages and it fit their idea of software-as-a-service.

What is did NOT do, is give us a way to write code that can't easily be
copied by a competitor (unless you leave your code on the server - as
Microsoft is planning on doing).

It did NOT solve DLL Hell (which never existed anyway), but gave us .Net
Version Hell as it's bigger, badder, more pissed off brother. Have you seen
the patches over at KBAlertz for 1.1? First, you have to CALL Microsoft to
get most of them - WTF is that about and who has time for it? Then, if you
patch your .Net framework, you have to patch your customers'.....breaking
work arounds for God-only-knows how many other developers.

It did NOT continue the tradition of allowing part-time-programmers (which
is the largest group of programmers by a long shot) to keep developing
applications in a RAD way like VB6. Most business applications are started
by part-time-programmers.....make that "WERE stareted...".

It did NOT continue the time-honored VB tradition of forward compatability.
Ever try and port a VB 6 enterprise app to VB.Net? You're better off
re-writing the whole thing. So, there goes the savings in time Microsoft
crowed about.....it just isn't there if you have to re-write most of your
apps.

It DID increase the size of required runtimes from just over 1 MB to 25 MB -
screwing up downloadable applications for approx 50% of US users who are
still on dialup (because DSL or cable just hasn't reached them yet). And
just why is the .Net runtime an optional download? This is the basket
Microsoft has tossed all of its eggs into.....why wouldn;t you push it to
every desktop? Better yet, just as your .Net app can do on its own, why not
have the ,Net executables only dl the parts of the .Net runtime that they
need from MS servers before running? It would reduce the size of
distributed apps and save downloading the whole 25MB mess at once for those
unfortunate 50% of Microsoft customers on dialup.

It DID alienate the world's largest programmer base. That's why they either
quit developing (which most of the part-time-programmers did) or moved to C#
or to an entire other language like REALbasic.

I could go on.....but why? Microsoft isn't gonna listen to me now anymore
than they listened to actual VB developers before they stabbed them in the
backs when they forced VB.Net on them.

It's like when a government screws up......they simply ignore the questions
and act like everything is OK. The people adjust.....only because they HAVE
to. Had they another choice, they'd make it.

I was programming with VB before it was publically available up until C#
was released, and IMHO I think C# and .Net is a huge step forward in just
about every direction.

(See above)

90% of VB controls were shovel-ware -- mostly wrappers around Win32 that
you don't need anymore (or never needed) because most of it is in the
framework now in a nicer form.

Actually, they were needed. The majority of VB programmers were not
programmers by trade. They programmed to make their trade better. They
were part-time-programmers who's primary work was not programming, but
having an easy-to-use language like VB6 (with tomns of drag and drop
controls) allowed them to write code that made their primary jobs easier -
and even resulted in widely distributed apps in many cases. Not so with
VB.Net's first 2 iterations.

The forementioned controls in this thread (and others) are great - well
beyond what was available in VB. VB was cool, for sure, and still has a
little ease-of-use over VS2003/5, but I think the tradeoffs are really
worth it. (Of course, I'm complaining about (lacking) .Net2.0/1.1 interop
on another thread, but you wouldn't expect a VB program to run with the
wrong copy of VBRUN.DLL or VB to produce code for a previous runttime
either - but I expect more now...)

Again....see above and hope that another developer continues to write
work-arounds in the framework instead of patching it.

 

[Cor Ligthert [MVP]]

Jim,

But, why not? I mean, Visual Basic 6 programmers were only the largest
group of programmers in the world. Who needs THAT?

Are you sure of that, I am very much in doubt, I think that you mix things
up, Visual Basic programmers are a large group. However that are as well all
Access, ASP programmers etc.

I doubt that VB6 has reached the amount of Cobol programmers already. That
is probably still the language with what the most money transactions are
done. Although that is decreasing and will be replaced probably by Java or
C# (if the role of SQL server goes on increasing), I see in that world not
really a role for VB.

By the way were you able to investigate all controls that came with VS 2005
already. I have the idea that some of those I will ignore and than see at a
certain moment that they can do things that I never had expected (what was
the situation with VS2002/2003).

Just my thought,

Cor

 

[Jim Hubbard]

"The most widely used programming language in the world is Visual Basic. It
is used for all sorts of scripting work and custom programming. Spreadsheet
templates and scripts encompass as much development every year as all other
applications. That is reality."
--- From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Computer_software)

The best guess is about 6 million VB 6 programmers were milling about before
the super nova blew away their world. In fact, check out -
http://www.bitwisemag.com/copy/bytegeist/bytegeist7.html for a great view of
one of the biggest screw ups in the history of big business (something I
pointed out when VB.Net was still in beta and I developed my first app with
it).

With the greatness that Microsoft says VB.Net is, you gotta wonder why
Microsoft is still using VB6 itself.......
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/07/22/microsoft_spyware_vb6/ .

As for VB 2005.....it actually got simpler to use. I was slightly
impressed......until I saw
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/future/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnvs05/html/vb9overview.asp
in which Microsoft continues to COMPLETELY misunderstand who VB developers
were and continues to make the language more complex.

Damn it all! If VB programmers wanted a complex language they would've been
C++ programmers! When will the idiots in Redmond get it? Stop letting bean
counters run your damned development languages! You're already out 1.5
BILLION beans because of them!

Evidentially one of these brilliant bean counters caught the corporate heads
fking a cat and has blackmailed them into doing the same thing to Visual
Basic. Whatever......

Sometimes, I wish stupidity were painful. If it were, I'd invest in
morphine dispensers on the Redmond campus.

: |

 

[Cor Ligthert [MVP]]

Jim,

If the tone of your message was less aggressive, than I could say that I
could partially deal with the message behind it. However in another
discussion in another newsgroup I have seen that VB6 developers are very
conservative and won't change anything and therefore others have to do it
for them.

Let say it this way, if the majority of the VB developers had been to judge
in past about a new development, than the USA was still Indian land.

However, why are you not trying once to write a message in a more
constructive than destructive way.

Just my thought,

Cor

 

[Jim Hubbard]

Because its been beat to death.

Why don't you ask why Microsoft didn't treat their customers better or how
things could be made better? Instead, you pick out things that matter not a
whit to the topic.

Kinda like what Microsoft does when someone brings it up.

Just drop it. They screwed us. They'll keep screwing us. That's life.

Move along people.......nothing to see here.

 

[Rob R. Ainscough]

Since I'm in the middle of repairing my VS 2005 installation right now...

Jim you repeat what we all know, but Microsoft can't make money unless they
hit the restart button every 5 years -- this is nothing new with Microsoft.
Some of the smartest developers I know code in C or assembler (not C++, C#)
and pure C is actually syntatically much simpler than any language I know --
they do the interface in C and the core in assembler -- once you get good
enough you can code any app just as fast as VB6 (trust me it can be done).
What these developers have successfully avoided is all the junk that goes
with the latest language and the "fill in the blanks" technology of the day
(CLR, SOAP, JIT, XML, ASP, ASP.NET, .NET framework) etc. etc.

C++, C#, VB6, VB.NET, .NET framework are really just more of the same --
wrappers.

How many routines have you written that are now part of some MS
library/wrapper? So your library is now duplicated in "their" library.
Most of my development these days is finding out what it can and can't
(hours) do as the actual code consists of a one liner (10 seconds). VS
2005 is a considerably better than the dog doo VS 2002 & VS 2003 -- those
were complete garbage (regardless of your choice of language). But I ask
myself the question, why am I still in this business -- Microsoft clearly
don't want coders to last more than 10 years doing actual coding -- cause
after a while we see the pattern and the light bulb goes on... it's all
about money.

Rob.

 

[ThunderMusic]

try http://www.syncfusion.com/ you'll find everything you need. Some
controls are a bit trivial to use, but others save you thousand of
programming hours. Really worth the look and absolutely worth the bucks (if
you're planning to make cash with your apps)

I hope it helps

 

[Jim Hubbard]

You are right. It's all about the Benjamins.

For Microsoft (let's remember that Microsoft is a corporation with
shareholders looking for a return - a very big return) changing everything
every few years is a part of their revenue stream. $50 billion just ain't
enough to keep the shareholders happy - I think we all understand
that....don't we?

But, for small businesses especially, it's also about the Benjamins. And,
Microsoft's revenue plan of changing everything so radically every few years
actually is running COUNTER to the needs of small business (and large
business).

How many times will small (and large) businesses spend hundreds of thousands
(perhaps millions) to upgrade to the newest Microsoft suite when the older
one worked just fine?

(Since this is what I know well.....) Like the move from VB 6 to VB.Net.
Was VB6 broken? Sure, it could have been improved (can't everything be
improved?). But, was it really in such bad shape that is had to be killed
completely and replaced with a new platform and language that is VB only in
name? Could businesses have continued to use and code in VB6 and
accomplished their goals? Sure they could have.

Obviously, the move was made to generate revenue. But, wouldn't it be
better to just charge yearly for the use of the programming suites and not
force your customers to reconsider their options every time you force them
to radically redesign the way the code and implement programs because you
are (we can say it....) greedy?

The frightening facts are that (unlike C++) if you code in a
Microsoft-controlled language, this is your life. You will be up-ended by
Microsoft at least every 5 years. You will be at the mercy of people that
simply want your money. NEVER fool yourself into thinking that a for-profit
company with $50,000,000,000 in cash reserves gives a tinker's damn about
your little business. They don't. They don't have to.

But, what are companies to do? Microsoft has us by the nads. Unless you
code in C++, you are (in all likelihood) a Microsoft slave like the rest of
us.

Linux is no help. As far as a RAD tool for Linux, REALbasic is the closest
thing going there. The major players in Linux programming development
(namely with Mono) are playing catch-up to Microsoft in programming as well
as in the OS. Until they break the "we got be like Bill" mentality and
deliver on a really RAD tool like VB to spur growth in supported
applications, they will never amount to much in desktop or applications
development.

Delphi has sold out C++ developers in favor of .Net. Why didn't they just
make C++ development simpler and more RAD? Because they, like most other
companies, are afraid to not follow in Microsoft's footsteps. Just look at
COBOL.Net and all of the other languages that Microsoft is trying to control
with the .Net framework. Scariest thing about it is that people are blindly
following along.....no matter how much Microsoft will charge them in 5
years.

Who will step out and lead the way out of this Microsoft monopoly? I don't
see anyone on the horizon.

So, back to rowing slaves! Stop your bitchin' and row faster! We've got
shareholders to feed!

Jim Hubbard

 

[Cor Ligthert [MVP]]

Jim,

If I said already in this thread before, with people thinking like you the
USA was still Indian land and Australia for the Aborigonals.

Some would like it.

Cor

 

[Jim Hubbard]

You are simply a troll.

You bring noting to the discussion except opposition to free speech and
freedom of expression.

You bring no evidence that would contradict the stated facts - probably
because there is none.

You cannot stand that opinions exist that are contrary to your own and that
facts exist that are not flattering of your choices.

How sad to be you.

 

[Cor Ligthert [MVP]]

Jim,

You are simply a troll.

Really amazing that *you* tell this

You bring noting to the discussion except opposition to free speech and
freedom of expression.

Really amazing *that* you tell this

You bring no evidence that would contradict the stated facts - probably
because there is none.

Really amazing that *you* tell this.

You cannot stand that opinions exist that are contrary to your own and
that facts exist that are not flattering of your choices.

Really amazing that *you* tell this.

How sad to be you.

By the way, "facts" is not a long message with words, it are words which can
not be disprove.

All your words can be disproved with one sentence.

Microsoft does his business in the free market area, nobody is obligated to
buy their stuff.

You are showing that you are for a controlled market. In a part of Europe in
1200-1400 century the economy was build on that. There are not very much
countries anymore with that, you can try to go to Cuba and try if you can
fulfil your ideas there. I have been in countries with that economy and I
know the results.

In addition, because that you obvious don't understand my previous message.
Columbus had a lot of trouble to convince people thinking like you, that the
truth could be that the world was not flat.

Cor

 

[Chris Dunaway]

I have found one .Net control that I just love......DotNetBar. But, I
haven't found a plethora of great controls or class libraries (like I had
with my VB 6).

One I found (which is free) is called NicePanel. It is made by
PureComponents. They have other controls which they sell, but they
give away the NicePanel. You might check them out at
www.purecomponents.com.

 

[Chris Dunaway]

I have found one .Net control that I just love......DotNetBar. But, I
haven't found a plethora of great controls or class libraries (like I had
with my VB 6).

I just remembered another one:

http://www.sunisoft.com/irisskin/index.htm

Not strictly a control, but very nice and easy to use.