Recommendations on a WPF Docking Library

Question

We are implementing an application that needs dockable windows, similar to Visual Studio 2005/2008, but with multiple "docking sites", unlike VS's single one. Does anyone have a recommendation on a good library for this - either OSS or commercial? I am aware that Infragistics has one, as well as Divelement's SandDock and WPF-Dock from DevComponents, as well as ActiPro's Docking & MDI product. There is also one on CodeProject. Has anyone used any of these libraries? Was the experience good or bad? If you have experience with one of them, does it support multiple "docking sites"?

Answer 1

The one from Codeproject is the AvalonDock - we use it for more then half a year now, but we're far from release yet so we have the flexibility. Before ending up with AvalonDock we tried Infragistix, ActiPro, SandDock and may be some others. Even though AvalonDock is not 100% bug free (well what is?) there are no major ones, it is very stable, fast and has all the functionality. It does support multiple docking sites.

Its an open source project and is in active development, so bugs are beeing found and fixed. Good experience so far.

Answer 2

I've been using the ActiPro library for several months and it's done me well. It does support multiple docking sites. The support is outstanding and you get some other controls (date picker, etc) that are missing from WPF. To me, for $150 it's money well spent. It worked out of the box, no fuss.

We used to use Divelements for WinForm controls but we think Actipro has better support, so we switched for WPF.

Just my two cents.

Answer 3

I use DotNetBar, because it has ribbon/dock and more controls, and it's inexpensive. It's great.

http://www.devcomponents.com/dotnetbar-wpf/

Answer 4

Don't forget AvalonDock on GitHub (part of WPF Toolkit). I've seen it mentioned in other places.

Initially I was going to use the ActiPro library (mostly because I am already using their ribbon), but I might give AvalonDock a chance since it is open source.

Anybody have any feedback/comments on AvalonDock?