How to Choose cost-effective control products

Planning a. NET project is an arduous and complex task and needs to be considered in many aspects. In the early stages of. NET development, some difficulties or restrictions encountered during the development process gradually evolved into the functional features of standard controls provided by Microsoft Visual Studio, and indeed helped many developers. With the development of. NET and commercial software, standard controls can no longer meet the development requirements. In this case, you need third-party controls. This article discusses how to select appropriate cost-effective third-party controls for your applications and projects, and also provides our reference and selection steps.

What are controls?

A component is a software module that supports reuse and can interact with other objects.

A widget is a type of component. It provides a user interface, or a component with a user interface is a widget. Common controls include table controls, chart controls, Combo boxes, buttons, Ribbon menus, and tree controls.

Components are controls that do not contain user interfaces.

What is a control package?

A control package is a commercial product developed by a third-party provider. It contains many controls, which are usually categorized by the technical platform to facilitate user selection and use. Such as WinForms, ASP. NET, WPF, or Windows Store.

Steps for selecting appropriate controls

The following six steps help you or your company decide how to select appropriate controls for your applications.

1. Understand your interface requirements

Create a list for your user interface. It mainly includes projects that cannot be easily implemented through standard controls, such as calendars, automatic parking tags, maps, etc.), or special requirements such as displaying status icons in table controls ). In addition, you must know what appearance and skin you want, such as theme, custom style, or none ).

In addition to the user interface, your requirements should also include functions such as Excel export or printing ). In short, before you select a control, you 'd better fully understand your needs, which helps you make the basic choice and determine a control package.

2. test and evaluate the control's capabilities to meet your needs.

After the preliminary selection is completed, the capabilities and functions of the control are evaluated. You can search for networks or consult industry experts to help you evaluate which provider's products and functions are more suitable for your applications. Check the selected control package one by one and check whether each function you need is provided. A simple and effective method is to check the website of the control provider, which has a function list and view the Online Demo and Demo deployed by the control provider. Normally, the website content matches with the online demo, and the reference can have better results.

Requirement	Component Suite One	Component Suite Two	Component Suite Three
Drag/drop Group	650) this. width = 650; "title =" image "style =" border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; "border =" 0 "alt =" image "src =" http://www.bkjia.com/uploads/allimg/131229/1234515491-0.png "width =" 28 "height =" 28 "/>	650) this. width = 650; "title =" image "style =" border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; margin: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; "border =" 0 "alt =" image "src =" http://www.bkjia.com/uploads/allimg/131229/123451J40-1.png "width =" 28 "height =" 28 "/>	650) this. width = 650; "title =" image "style =" border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; margin: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; "border =" 0 "alt =" image "src =" http://www.bkjia.com/uploads/allimg/131229/1234515O5-2.png "width =" 28 "height =" 28 "/>
Multi-month calendar	650) this. width = 650; "title =" image "style =" border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; margin: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; "border =" 0 "alt =" image "src =" http://www.bkjia.com/uploads/allimg/131229/1234515157-3.png "width =" 28 "height =" 28 "/>	650) this. width = 650; "title =" image "style =" border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; margin: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; "border =" 0 "alt =" image "src =" http://www.bkjia.com/uploads/allimg/131229/12345135H-4.png "width =" 28 "height =" 28 "/>
PDFImport and Export	650) this. width = 650; "title =" image "style =" border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; margin: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; "border =" 0 "alt =" image "src =" http://www.bkjia.com/uploads/allimg/131229/1234514S8-5.png "width =" 28 "height =" 28 "/>		650) this. width = 650; "title =" image "style =" border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; margin: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; "border =" 0 "alt =" image "src =" http://www.bkjia.com/uploads/allimg/131229/1234512539-6.png "width =" 28 "height =" 28 "/>
SupportedXMLData Source	650) this. width = 650; "title =" image "style =" border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; margin: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; "border =" 0 "alt =" image "src =" http://www.bkjia.com/uploads/allimg/131229/1234515621-7.png "width =" 28 "height =" 28 "/>

3. Evaluate costs

At this step, you should have seen that purchasing controls is more cost-effective than self-development. When you waste time further evaluating or developing a prototype, you can eliminate another option through the license policy and price. This is a relatively simple task. Most third-party control providers provide competitive pricing and authorization models, as well as free deployment licenses, so they all look similar. However, when you enter the details, the problem is different. For example:

A) Is there a discount for purchasing multiple authorizations or team authorization?

B) Do I need to purchase additional authorization for the server?

C) if my developer has two computers, do I need to buy two licenses for him?

D) What is the annual renewal price?

Most providers offer discounts for multiple authorizations or team authorizations, which may not be easily found on the website, so it is best to establish a good relationship with sales representatives. Generally, you can chat online or call to ask for discounts. For products with similar features, price comparison is equally important. Of course, sometimes you need to tell your boss that you have made a decision to save money. Of course, if the product features are more suitable for your project than other competitors, then the price is irrelevant.

4. Make a preliminary decision to narrow down the selection scope

At this time, you may have excluded some of the products that have been selected after the selection and have some preference for a product. If you still have time or resources, you can lock the range to products of 2 or 3 providers or to one. Based on the previous price and function evaluations, you may have found the best choice. If there are still some problems to be solved or uncertain during the previous evaluation process, you can also select the product as appropriate to "deduct points ". In the next few cases, you can determine your choice and eliminate uncertainty. Of course, you may also start over and select a product again.

5. Test and build a prototype

If the previous steps are smooth, it is time to start. Most third-party control providers provide a 30-day free trial. Taking advantage of this time, we should not only evaluate the product, but also build a prototype. It is best to use the real data of your company. If there is any difficulty, at least the data of the same structure and size should be created to simulate how to load the data on the interface.

At the same time, we also need to take a look at how to use third-party controls to meet your needs. Most controls can simplify your work by setting some attributes, but in some cases, more encoding may be required to fully match the business logic. The demo program often highlights the features of the product and ignores some important details in the actual use case. Therefore, prototype creation is particularly important, which is the key before you confirm the payment.

If the prototype and test tasks of the product you selected cannot meet your requirements, go back to Step 1 and try other control products. Of course, if there is no problem with the test, you can basically draw the following conclusions.

6. make the final decision

There are also some things to consider before you finally decide to pay, including: documentation and technical support, scalability and reliability. Most control providers are abroad and there are only dealers or agents in China. This is insufficient in Chinese documents, especially in localization technical support. If the provider has branch structures or professional support or even R & D teams in China, it is more reassuring in terms of documentation and technical support.

Scalability indicates the compatibility of your purchased products with future technologies. In other words, this is the potential of the control. If the scalability is good, it is equivalent to the value of the product you purchased in the future. When considering this, you can refer to the following aspects:

Do the controls you need in the control package have corresponding products on different platforms?

Is the Control Based on or following industry standards, such as HTML5, CSS3, and jQuery?

Does the control package support trendy technologies, such as AngularJS, Knockout, MVVM mode, and WinRT?

Buying controls is actually an investment. You need to consider whether the purchased products come from excellent companies, whether there are long-term stable development around the cycle, trustworthy teams. Emerging or small enterprises have relatively higher purchase risks. To measure this, the simplest way is to check whether the provider and Team of the product are focused on the control field and how long it has taken to provide products and services for the control users.

This article from the "grape city control blog" blog, please be sure to keep this source http://powertoolsteam.blog.51cto.com/2369428/1344361