Devexpress Windows Controls are unintuitive to use?

Question

I am seeking general opinion here. I and my team have been working on a Windows project that uses DevExpress Winform controls. After working on these for more than 6 months , more than half of us are left with a feeling that DevExpress is not only overly complicated and unintuitive ( compared to standard Windows forms controls ) to program with , but they are also seriously flawed in some design situations.

Anyone who has used the controls in production projects want to add ?

Answer 1

I've been working with the DevExpress controls for about a year now (mainly XtraGrid).

We switched to XtraGrid because the standard WinForms grid controls ran out of gas very early in the development of my application (a scientific instrumentation app).

I agree with your comment about their controls being somewhat complicated and non-intuitive. There are so many features it's often hard to wade through all the properties, and understand how they interact.

I don't agree "they are also seriously flawed in some design situations" - my experience has been the opposite. The overall design seems so powerful and well thought out that almost anything is possible (though I often need guidance from their tech support to implement the features I need).

The excellent tech support (24 hour turnaround on all questions) is the key here - if I can't figure out how to do what I want relatively quickly, I just send a support request.

This was a change in my work habits - I generally prefer to figure things out myself - but has been working well on my project.

Overall, I'm very happy we went with DevExpress.

Answer 2

Working in DevExpress, I think that our controls architecture is very good and the controls are rather intuitive. However, I also understand that the learning curve can be somehow difficult just because controls provide a lot of features. Many features lead to complexity and it seems it is impossible to create a rich functional control which would be easy to use. I can only guarantee you that our support team will be glad to help if you decide to use our controls... Anyway, it is entirely your choice.