Customer Reviews

Professional DevExpress ASP.NET Controls (Wrox Programmer to Programmer)

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I've used DevExpress controls for almost two years for web application programming. This book has made it easy to explore some components and features I've not had time to research on my own. I find the examples to be clear and well-documented with text and screen shots and they come from a good cross-section of tools and capabilities. For example, during the initial skim I came across a code block that answered a report creation question I had intended to submit to tech support.

A programmer new to DevExpress should have no problems following along and the free controls on the included disk are a nice bonus, although there doesn't appear to be anything new on the disk for existing customers.

For me, one of the best and perhaps the most useful of the 14 programming books I've purchased in the last two years.

One of my biggest complaints about DevExpress was their lack of good documentation for their products. In the last couple of years, they've come a long way towards improving that. The problem with this book is it is already outdated if you stay up to date with the latest DevExpress releases. It's not a bad book, but with the now acceptable online documentation, knowledge base and tutorials, it's almost not worth buying.

The book itself is decent. It includes some good examples on using DevExpress ASP.NET controls. However, only a portion of the book is useful unless you purchase the full control suite. For example there are chapters devoted to the ASPxDataGrid and the ASPxHTMLEditor. The CD only includes a trial of these controls. The controls that are included are freely available on the DevExpress site, so you really aren't getting "over $249 of controls". The amazon description also mentions the Silverlight Menu and Grid controls. This book does not even mention these controls anywhere that I could see.
Don't get me wrong, I really do think DevExpress has some GREAT software products and I have used several of them over the past few years. However the book and included CD are very misleading.