This is the third in a series of reviews that will cover what is contained in the DevExpress DXperience Universal Edition. This is the most complete of the subscription packages available from DevExpress. The other packages include Enterprise, WinForms, and ASP.NET. For a matrix of what each package contains, check out their edition page. In this review I will examine what is available for working with WinForms.
There are three basic ways that you can acquire the controls for working with WinForms. The first is, of course, within the DXperience Universal Edition. This contains pretty much everything you need for creating a ground to sky WinForms or Web-based application.
The second is with DXperience WinForms which is a collection of WinForm development tools that are designed to add advanced capabilities to your desktop applications. The suite includes a whole series of controls that give you the ability to deliver more features in your applications with higher quality and in less time.
You will be able to give your users much more professional interfaces while being more productive within Visual Studio. These more functional features will provide more capabilities with relatively little additional effort on your part. 
Finally, you can also purchase most of these controls as standalone suites that target specific features. I will highlight all of the controls below. The Reporting tool and Printing-Exporting library as well as the Charting control I will go over in more detail in part four.
What are the controls that you get with DXperience WinForms?
• XtraGrid Suite is a very comprehensive Grid and Data editor for VS.NET. There are five built-in data views; Card, Layout, Grid, Branded Grid, and Advanced Branded Grid. You can create your own custom views and you can also have different views for master and detail records.
• XtraEditors Library is a flexible masked edit control that gives you the ability to create simple masks easily, but also provides you with full regular expression support. This gives you the ability to address even the most complex data entry scenarios. There are over 35 data edit and multi-purpose controls that can be used either bound or unbound.
.jpg?t=20120527181101)
Article comments
1 - Andy Foreman
I can only guess that this author has not actually used the DevExpress controls, and is merely 'wowed' by their appearance - as so many are.
Fact is, these controls are for the most part beautiful, however, they are likely the worst controls produced for WinForms work due to (#1) their terribly over-complex nature - you need to spend literally days just to even use them, and (#2) these are so poorly documented that the documentation itself is more of a comedy. Additionally, (#3) although these controls are supported, each support request takes about 1 day to process and along with the horrible documentation this means it can take weeks, yes WEEKS to even use one seemingly otherwise simple control. Finally (#4) these controls can do many elaborate things, but what they cannot do generally, is anything simple. Example? We tried to do a simple tree list with checkboxes - sorry DE controls cant do that.
The fact is that when you want controls to help enhance and SPEED your development, DevExpress is exactly NOT the package you want. Think of it this way - how long did it take you to become proficient at Visual Studio? A week, a month, two? Thats about how long it takes to do the same for EACH control DevExpress puts out. Yeah, lots of controls, weeks to learn each one - and it leaves you asking the question that we asked and then found MANY purchasers ask - why do they call it 'DevExpress' when there is nothing even remotely 'Express' about it???
This is a package that gets great reviews and yet, like many, these reviews are not produced by people using the package - or as we did, trying to use many components of it (so they get a full experience) - these are quick reviews lacking in depth. The truth is when you work with DevExpress for months as we have, you will wind up regretting your purchase - yes, you get a lot - but most of it is just frustrating, time-consuming, and in the end there are MANY other control providers who make your work easy and quick - DevExpress does just the opposite.
Lets put it this way - The Space Shuttle is a very fancy, complex, and 'cool' vehicle - but if all you need to do is go to the end of the driveway, the Space Shuttle is the WORST vehicle you can choose. In fact, there, a skateboard would be MUCH better because there is no learning curve, no 10,000 gallons of fuel, no 100,000 buttons and knobs to ensure you have set correctly - you just get on the skateboard and go!
If you have lots and lots of time to learn a vast collection of highly-over-complex controls so poorly documented, more power to you - go for DevExpress - but if you work for a living and need controls that enhance and SPEED UP your work - AVOID DEVEXPRESS LIKE THE PLAGUE!!!
DevExpress is a perfect example of overkill run amock.