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My company is starting a major greenfield development project using DevExpress WPF controls. I just read this critical review of their WPF controls. Do you agree that DevExpress does not understand the WPF paradigm and will cause our developers grief during development and maintenance? Can you suggest an alternate vendor of WPF controls? I'm looking for a vendor with WPF controls that will enhance our application while fitting well with the WPF API, binding and MVVM.

You can read a quote from the blog post here.

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I do agree, but then again I was a 'dyed in the wool' WinForms developer when I started using them. I wouldn't use them now if I had the chance. – Steve Evers Apr 1 '11 at 21:19
For me not knowing anything about devepress wpf controls the referenced article is impossible to follow without specific examples. Having only vague generalized arguments that the controls only work with codebehind eventhandlers but not supporting the binding the mvvm-way is difficuilt for me. Maybe the so community has some concrete examples showing how mvvm-bindings sould be and how it has to be done with dev express controls. – k3b Apr 2 '11 at 9:23
I wrote the original article, and have decided to work with DevExpress in a private capacity after speaking with them so I have regrettably decided to remove the post. – user32858 Jul 30 '11 at 14:16
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Strange - the page you referenced has been removed. Perhaps it's a conspiracy. :) – Scott Wilson Jul 30 '11 at 14:34
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I have not used DevExpress, so I cannot answer fully, but I will say that Telerik works great with MVVM in my experience. – Morgan Herlocker Aug 16 '11 at 19:22
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3 Answers

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I agree, using DevExpress WPF controls in an MVVM manner results in constant work-arounds and code behind hacks just to get the basics to work. But on the other hand if you're happy with using code behind then they should be fine.

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up vote 4 down vote

We've been using DevExpress components in our latest Prism 4 based project and what is most annoying is the lack of Commanding support (InputBindings on controls don't work (at least when you want to override a binding), the RibbonControl does not allow composition from multiple views so you end up writing a service and creating your (contextual) tabs in code instead of in xaml.

I have no experience with toolsets by other vendors for WPF, we moved to DevExpress after a bad run with Infragistics grid in WinForms and basically took the DevExpress components for the new project since we already had the licenses.

If other vendors claim better support I would say go for Telerik or Infragistics, both are also very complete toolsets, the DevExpress communication on MVVM has been 'it's coming', but it is yet to arrive

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We've been using the Infragistics WPF controls (never used Telerik nor DevExpress personally) for about 5 years. They're fine for the most part, though a couple of the controls make life a bit complicated if you're using the MVVM pattern (I had to extend the XamDataTree to support a few additional properties, otherwise we couldn't possibly use it with MVVM). But overall, things work pretty well. – MetalMikester Apr 19 at 13:31
up vote 1 down vote

We've been using Telerik WPF controls and have been happy so far. Telerik seems to have a solid understanding of MVVM and they respond fairly quickly to questions on their forum.

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I'm actually using WPF Telerik controls in the ongoing project along with Caliburn.Micro and I have to say that for ~98% of the time it's all coming together surprisingly well. There are barely any rough edges that I have hit (e.g. using RadWindow with IWindowManager), and even then, it wasn't any kind of completely broken functionality. Also their MVVM samples are quite good,IMO. – Trust me - I'm a Doctor 23 hours ago

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