Syncfusion - The complete Essential Studio suite for free
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The catch is that it's only free for teams of 5 or less. You can distribute applications you write with this.
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... edit ...
What I did to be able to (finally, on the eighth attempt) try out the SF WinForm Grid:
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create a new WinForm Project in Visual Studio 2013 targeting FrameWork 4.5.1.
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drag the SF Grid onto the Form.
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manually add a reference to:
c:\Program Files (x86)\Syncfusion\Essential Studio\12.4.0.24\Assemblies\4.5\Syncfusion.Grid.Windows.XmlSerializers.dll
... end edit ... I was curious to try out the current version of the SyncFusion Grid, so I downloaded this release, got a free key, and installed it on my Win 8.1/x64 machine. Created a new project in Visual Studio 2013 targeting FrameWork 4.5.1, created a WinForm Project, dropped the SF Grid on a Form: will not build:
"Code generation for property 'SerializeCellsBehavior' failed. Error was: 'Type 'Syncfusion.Windows.Forms.Grid.GridSerializeCellsBehavior' is not available in the target framework.'
Tried changing the FrameWork to 4.5: that crashed Visual Studio. Tried the same thing with FrameWork 4.0: same result. FrameWork 4.0 Client: some SF Controls show up in the ToolBox, but not Grid. Below FrameWork 4.0, you get errors like:
Error 2 The type or namespace name 'Tasks' does not exist in the namespace 'System.Threading' (are you missing an assembly reference?)
Error 3 The type or namespace name 'Tasks' does not exist in the namespace 'System.Threading' (are you missing an assembly reference?)
After seven tries to get a basic Grid running, I'll stop at this point. I note that in their install folder
C:\Program Files (x86)\Syncfusion\Essential Studio\12.4.0.24\precompiledassemblies\12.4.0.24
They show assemblies for .NET 2,3,3.5,4,4.5,4.5.1 Since they're gifting this whopper on "the rest of us," guess I'll give their support forum a jingle.
«I'm asked why doesn't C# implement feature X all the time. The answer's always the same: because no one ever designed, specified, implemented, tested, documented, shipped that feature. All six of those things are necessary to make a feature happen. They all cost huge amounts of time, effort and money.» Eric Lippert, Microsoft, 2009
Thanks, that is nice to know.
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Ranjan.D wrote:
revenue should be below $1 million USD
Darn it! :rolleyes:
The difficult we do right away... ...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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The catch is that it's only free for teams of 5 or less. You can distribute applications you write with this.
Look forward to an article Pete. Downloaded and looked around and it's a huge library, kind of intimidating. Tried a simple app this morning and there were a few problems building so would really help if someone that knew the lib could guide us mere mortals though it. :)
New version: WinHeist Version 2.1.0 My goal in life is to have a psychiatric disorder named after me. I'm currently unsupervised, I know it freaks me out too but the possibilities are endless.
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May I ask which companies' components you're using now? I'm currently considering to purchase a DevExpress WinForms suite.
Disclaimer: I am not and have never been affiliated with any company that provides control suites. The following is just my personal experience. I have used DevExpress Winforms exclusively for several years. I switched from a very bad experience with Component One and Syncfusion. DevExpress Winforms suite is very nice. Controls are consistent - that is, the way their properties are laid out and their property names. Controls are integrated. For example, you can put a DX combo box on the form surface, or you can put it in a DX grid. Same combo box control. Controls are very customizable. By this I mean that if you want to set a specific caption or custom total for group rows while grouping a grid by a column value, go ahead and do it. Top notch customer support. Very little waiting for support. I had an excellent experience. But please note that I have only used their WinForms controls -- not web, wpf, orm, etc. But I expect these other sets of controls would be equally good. On the negative side, and these are probably true of most control suites.... It is pricey. The files you have to include with your project bulk it up quite a bit. The controls feel "heavy" sometimes, like the computer has to downshift in order to process the form. But greater functionality usually involves more computing needs and larger files to deploy. Hope this helps with your decision.
Mike
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Disclaimer: I am not and have never been affiliated with any company that provides control suites. The following is just my personal experience. I have used DevExpress Winforms exclusively for several years. I switched from a very bad experience with Component One and Syncfusion. DevExpress Winforms suite is very nice. Controls are consistent - that is, the way their properties are laid out and their property names. Controls are integrated. For example, you can put a DX combo box on the form surface, or you can put it in a DX grid. Same combo box control. Controls are very customizable. By this I mean that if you want to set a specific caption or custom total for group rows while grouping a grid by a column value, go ahead and do it. Top notch customer support. Very little waiting for support. I had an excellent experience. But please note that I have only used their WinForms controls -- not web, wpf, orm, etc. But I expect these other sets of controls would be equally good. On the negative side, and these are probably true of most control suites.... It is pricey. The files you have to include with your project bulk it up quite a bit. The controls feel "heavy" sometimes, like the computer has to downshift in order to process the form. But greater functionality usually involves more computing needs and larger files to deploy. Hope this helps with your decision.
Mike
Thanks Mike, much appreciated! I'm a bit intimidated by the amount of customization options you have there but I haven't encountered any strange misbehaviour/doesnt-compile/crashes so far in contrast to what I'm hearing about other suites so I think I'll go for it. Sebastian
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I just noticed, Syncfusion is offering a community license of all their controls for free, http://www.syncfusion.com/products/communitylicense[^] The page says they liked what Microsoft did with Visual Studio Community, and decided they would do the same. It is crazy what has happened for individual and small teams of software developers in the last couple months.
I have used Syncfusion products in the past. I found there documentation to be sorely lacking and as a result had many problems with their components even with many calls to their tech-support6 people. I just took a look at the documentation for their WPF components and it states that they are only compatible with up to Visual Studio 2010. I doubt this is correct bit it again demonstrates my point...
Steve Naidamast Black Falcon Software, Inc. blackfalconsoftware@outlook.com
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I just noticed, Syncfusion is offering a community license of all their controls for free, http://www.syncfusion.com/products/communitylicense[^] The page says they liked what Microsoft did with Visual Studio Community, and decided they would do the same. It is crazy what has happened for individual and small teams of software developers in the last couple months.
What about runtime licensing? If I build using these tools, can I distribute the exe's?
Where there's smoke, there's a Blue Screen of death.
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What about runtime licensing? If I build using these tools, can I distribute the exe's?
Where there's smoke, there's a Blue Screen of death.
The page says you can distribute application, sell them or whatever you want.
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The page says you can distribute application, sell them or whatever you want.
OK I read that they could not provide run-time licensing. Wasn't real sure what that meant.
Where there's smoke, there's a Blue Screen of death.
