ComponentArt's Menu control sure is cool

I'm not sure if you've seen it before, but ComponentArt's Menu control for ASP.NET sure is cool. I first encountered it in SmarterMail's Web interface, and I have to say I'm seriously impressed. It works in all of the normal browsers and it renders pretty fast.

For about $700, you can get a license to redistribute all of their controls, royalty free, and I think that's a bargain. Sure, the pages in which you use these controls get a little fat, but for the beautiful, rich UI they generate, I think it's well worth it. The hassle of getting this junk to work when you try it yourself is a pain.

Anyone else have an opinion about these controls?

5 Comments

  • worth waiting for ASP.NET 2.0?



    Kevin

  • ComponentArt controls are the best I have ever worked with (and I've worked with a bunch of third party controls). They are insanely flexible and work great.

  • We just implemented the controls ourselves on a couple of projects. The ASP.NET 2.0 menu control is just terrible. It's hard to work with or even get to look good, and really lacks a lot of the nice features the ComponentArt tool has.



    And luckily the componentArt peopel actually test in browsers other than IE, which I'm pretty sure the ASP.NET stuff rarely sees.

  • They're great, they listen to feedback in their forums and are quick to turn out fixes. One of the things that kills me about their TreeView control though is that if you use dynamic node population to avoid post-backs of the entire page, when you *do* post back the page for some other reason all the nodes that were loaded dynamically are lost. I have no clue why they can't round trip the dynamically loaded nodes using a hidden input. Other than that though we're very happy customers. :)

  • Thanks for the kind words everyone! I just thought I'd point out, in regards to Drews comment:



    "One of the things that kills me about their TreeView control though is that if you use dynamic node population to avoid post-backs of the entire page, when you *do* post back the page for some other reason all the nodes that were loaded dynamically are lost. I have no clue why they can't round trip the dynamically loaded nodes using a hidden input. "



    The dynamically loaded nodes can definitely be persisted through postbacks with a few settings. Basically, you need to:



    1. ensure state is enabled on the tree

    2. grant each node has a unqiue, valid ID

    3. set the TreeViews PersistLoadOnDemandPath property to true.



    In newer versions of the tree, this last property is true by default. Of course, if anyone is having a problem with this, they should definitely let us know by opening a support request on our site- support is offered at no charge.



    Again, thanks for the compliments- its great to hear we're meeting your needs.



    Stephen Hatcher

    Developer Support Manager

    ComponentArt Inc.

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