A frequent complaint about WPF from potential WPF adopters is the lack of a real datagrid. WPF has the powerful layout panel (Grid) but it a layout element only. Its real mission is to provide a way for you to organize your UI elements, not show your database data.
Traditionally third parties come along and fill in the gaps in Microsoft product line with control libraries. Often these libraries are huge and expensive. There was a lively datagrid market for Visual Basic developers back in the mid ’90s for example.
It looks like the same thing is happening with WPF. I’ve encountered many commercial component programmers at WPF events and we’re starting to see releases of component libraries.
Free Datagrid
Exceed just released their own WPF datagrid. I haven’t had time for a full review of the tool yet but it seems to be very useful from the quick overview I had last night. The best part — the datagrid is free. This doesn’t appear to be a limited time offer either. Now you’ve really got no reason to put off adoption of WPF :>
Screenshots
I’ll have a more detailed post later but here are a couple screenshots to keep you happy.
Applying themes to the grid.
Grouping data in grid.
Validation
-Walt
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[...] the difference? Creating product demos with WPF and XBAP January 29th, 2007 A couple days ago I wrote about the free WPF datagrid component from Exceed. This is good news for WPF developers [...]
Yeah, I just installed the “Free” WPF datagrid component from Xceed and it told me I have 45 days left in my trial. Guess it’s not free anymore
It`s is free, you just have to set your free DGF license key in the code before any product code is called.