Third party WPF controls: Devexpress vs Telerik

Question

I would like to hear your opinion about the two control providers.

To put it in a nutshell: I am building a classic LOB desktop application. The app will be created entirely in WPF. PRISM 4.0 will be used heavily. Whenever possible, I will try to follow MVVM pattern(it would be nice if the selected controls were designed to adopt it easily).

Mainly I am interested in:

• Good data grid, which supports sorting, filtering, grouping, exporting, printing and works fine with a big amount of bound records(10k+)

  Combobox that supports filtering and auto-complete.

  Navigation bar

  Layout manager that is similar to the one that is used VS 2010

In a long term, I would also like to use their:

• Report tools

  "Data mining" controls

  Localization support in order to localize data grid actions for instance,..

I have been using Winforms Devxpress for a while and I was quite satisfied. Their support team is great. Still, I want to check if there is any better option on the market. In other words, I would like to know if Telerik's controls have any additional value?

Answer 1

We had to make a quite similiar decision a few months ago. We were using WinForms, the Microsoft Composite UI Application Block and DevExpress WinForms. For our new application, created new from scratch, we decided to use WPF (without PRISM) and we were especially in need of some grids, so we used DevExpress WPF Controls.

This was imho a good and a bad decision.

The good part:

• You can use the controls in a very similiar way you are used to. There are some differences, but you get used to them quickly. This is a huge plus, because it took us quite some time to get used to them while using the WinForm controls.

• The controls, especially the grids, are useable as the WinForms controls. If your users are used to them, the transition is very smooth.

• Applying one of the provided themes is very simple and you get a good looking solution without much annoyance. They apply to pure WPF controls, too, so the whole application looks consistent. We are still using mostly Windows XP, the themes apply to this as well, which is exceptional useful for us.

The bad part:

• We expected the DevExpress WPF controls to provide the same control coverage as the WinForm controls did. The DevExpress WPF controls at that time had version number 10.1, and we were disappointed that some controls were missing completely (for example TreeList, Schedulers, Passwordbox or the very useful LookUpEdit). While the later three are available with version 10.2, TreeLists still aren't there. If you are looking for additional controls from the WinForms package than the ones listed, it is a good idea to check if they exist for the DX WPF controls first.

• Some parts made the impression that they were done quickly. There were some quickfixes neccessary to get the controls running the way we intended to use them. The good thing is that most of these problems are solved with 10.2.

• The documentation and the support center for the WPF controls feels less complete than the WinForms documentation. While this is probably just my personal impression, I was almost always able to find an answer to a certain problem I had with the WinForms controls on the DX website, I'm not that succesful with the WPF controls. The support team is as helpful as always, though.

This list is not intended to be exhaustive, those were the things that immediately came to my mind.

So, what would I do if I had to do the same decision again? I would very likely use DevExpress again. Most negative things that bugged me were fixed with version 10.2, so the controls are quite usable now. I especially like that you can use your former experience with the WinForm controls (with limitations, of course). The later was also the primary reason for buying the DX components. Unfortunately, I don't know the Telerik controls enough to say anything about them, so if someone has experience with both, especially with switching from DX to Telerik that would surely be a very interesting information.

We're not using the MVVM pattern with our grids, as the "traditional" way of loading and displying data is sufficient enough for us. Some of our grids contain 100k+ values, the performance of the grid is imho always ok. The controls disn't look like they had a build in support for MVVM, if you're trying to use it it looks like you have to do everything manually. Maybe 10.2 changed things here, I haven't checked, but I don't think so.

We used our own implementation for localisation, so I don't know about the DX localization support.

Answer 2

I evaluated several WPF control packages, Telerik, devExpress, Xceed, SyncFusion, etc. We were primarily interested in a grid control that could handle a large amount of data and have good performance. In a simple test, we loaded 120,000 items into the grid and did a group on the fields.

DevExpress was the fasting loading compared to the others. It took 15 secs to load, while the others where all about 45 seconds. DV would group in 7 seconds, while the others took nearly 45 seconds. A couple of the other controls packages locked up! (fyi, the data was being loaded from Mongo).

When bringing up the filter dialog for a column on Telerik, it would extend beyond the bottom of the screen without any scrollbar. Also, cicking on a filter item in the dropdown combo would immediately do the filter then rather than waiting for me to select the others. Therefore, if selecting 5 items, it would take 5 times as long.

I wish DevExpress would have a checkbox dropdown filter option (like Excel). You can only select a single value, but it does have a very nice filter dialog that allows you to do more complex filters. Still, would like to be able to easily check a few values and move on quickly.

Telerik integrated nicely with Sql Server using Entity Framework. It's paging, sorting, filtering, etc. integrated directly with EF and had Sql Server do these operations at the database. Very nice! I monitored the sql commands as doing operations. It you are viewing large amounts of data on sql server, this may be the one control that really does this well. (Except for the dropdown filter combo that does not handle large data very well). We are using Mongo for our large data, so this did not apply to us. We did have a few exceptions with Telerik when testing data. DevExpress does not have a paging option unless you it yourself.

In the end we chose DV due to performance reasons with large data and stability.

Answer 3

I would definitely go for DevExpress, their components are in my opinion nicer and with better APIs than Telerik ones, then let's don't forget you already know their object model, naming conventions and APIs from the windows forms world, this is not a minor thing because you will most likely reuse your know-how and this is far more important and valuable.

Answer 4

The Telerik RadDataGrid supports MVVM and the command pattern properly straight out of the box. The DevExpress one requires a lot of extra code before you can use MVVM with it properly.

Answer 5

DevExpress WPF is slow and not optimized performance wise. I've tried rich text edit control of both DevExpress and Telerik. Telerik control outperforms DevExpress in terms of performance.

Answer 6

I am using Telerik and DEVExpress both. Based on my experience, DevExpress is better in win form controls. But, Telerik is more better than in Asp.NET controls. DevExpress rendering result on the server controls are very messy in client site. They create button control using the table tag.

Answer 7

I was exactly in the same position few months ago when evaluating WPF controls for a new WPF project. I’m not sure if you have made any decision, but I can offer my experiences with Telerik and hope it helps.

In my project, one particular need was to use TreeListView and there were limited reputed vendors provided this control. I spent some time doing researches and found Telerik which offered for what I needed. I downloaded the trial and used it for 2 months, contacted their support, checked their forums. I can tell you that they have excellent supports! Usually the supports provided solution with sample codes. Like all developers, we would encounter roadblock, we studied the API, documentations, and examples. For me, support is important as it saves development time! My feedback is Telerik provides great UI controls with vast collection and customization choices, and great technical supports. However, their documentation isn’t so good. Also, watch out performance in WPF controls, my experience is it has some performance hit if you have large data source. Be sure to do some prototypes in critical architectural areas if performance is the key requirements.

Just give it a try and see if it meets your needs or not.

BTW, I’m also ComponentOne customer. Just get the controls for what you need if it can save you time. The important thing is which helps ship your product on time! Hope this helps.

Answer 8

I'd take telerik hands down...#1 reason being support, #2 reason is that if the control can't do what you need you just need to put in a ticket or post to the support forums and you can DRIVE their feature development.

...pretty cool :)

Answer 9

I believe devexpress is realy beter in WinFormApp. I'm using it for several years it's really nice. On the other hand recently I'h tried its WPF controls, It's terrible and full of bag I don't have time to switch to telerik for this project. Another problem that I had with devex is RTL. If You want to have a multi language app It can be important. Telerik can support RTL But Devex don't Support it in WinApp and in WPF in Devex don't supported it completely. AS I said devex is better in WinApp without RTL.

Answer 10

have not tried DevExpress, but I use Telerik for WPF it has some good components the Gridview for example. but other components are full of bugs example a simple dockcontrol to this day they have not managed to get it to work properly.

Answer 11

I used both telerik wpf radcontrols and the devexpress ! From my experience i was satisfied with telerik controls as my main objective was to be more productive and deliver a desktop application with a good UX in a short time ! Telerik make heavy use of the mvvm pattern and recommend using it as most of their demos are based on it ! As for documentation looking at the demos source code was enough for me to have a quick start ! On the other hand devexpress is more mature. in other words, telerik contains bugs but The support will always find a workaround for you if you ask.

Answer 12

From my point of view DevExpress provides some what light weight controlls compare to Telerik. Reporting using DevExpress is more flexible. But at the same time Telerik having a better look and feel comapre to another tools.

Answer 13

I have a friend that uses Telerik controls and he absolutely swears by them. He specifically mentioned how their data grid control is the greatest thing since sliced bread and uses all the time (which might help you out based on your first bullet point).

Again, not firsthand experience, but I trust his opinions on these kind of things.