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My company is starting a major greenfield development project using DevExpress WPF controls. I just read this critical review of their WPF controls:

[…] DevExpress developers completely misunderstood WPF when they developed their WPF controls. I really cannot impress upon you sufficiently well just how much of a displeasure it is using their controls. I feel absolutely terrible (almost guilty) about talking about a vendor with such negativity, but they have made a serious mistake in their WPF suite, it has been a singular source of the most abject frustration for me in about a decade of developing software.

Do you agree that DevExpress does not understand the WPF paradigm and will cause our developers grief during development and maintenance? Can you suggest an alternate vendor of WPF controls? I'm looking for a vendor with WPF controls that will enhance our application while fitting well with the WPF API, binding and MVVM.

The link (above) to the critical blog post is broken. The original author has stated:

I wrote the original article, and have decided to work with DevExpress in a private capacity after speaking with them so I have regrettably decided to remove the post. Regards, Ira

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DeveloperDan
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Abject frustration is EXACTLY what I experienced thanks to DevExpress. I lost hours of my life attempting to simply bind a combo box. The drop-down list at best would only display my ItemsSource class name multiple times. I even posted a StackOverflow question to figure out what I could possibly be doing wrong. Finally on a whim I tried removing this one line of xaml: 

devx:ThemeManager.ThemeName="DeepBlue"

Suddenly my problem went away. It was caused by the Developer Express wpf theme DeepBlue. Discovering the problem was a tremendous relief. My company will now be using Telerik WPF controls. My colleagues are quite happy with DevExpress Asp.Net controls. It is only the WPF suite we are avoiding.

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DeveloperDan
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I have used Syncfusion, Ingragistics, Telerik as well as various smaller libraries and DevExpress is my platform of choice. I find them to be not only super supportive of WPF and MVVM but their tech support has been phenomenal. I actually was mid project in a multi-million dollar project using Syncfusion WPF and found so many bugs in the library that my customer was close to pulling the plug. I switched mid stream to DevEx and they save my bacon. Their controls always seem the most up to date and incorporating the latest trends. I wish they did more Xamarin stuff and some of the other things that Syncfusion does but I would rather have less stuff that actually works than a wide array of stuff that doesn't.

Shannon McCoy
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I would like to clarify our opinion on usage of our controls in applications built based on the MVVM pattern. At the moment, we are working on a series of examples which should clarify how our controls can be used under different popular MVVM based frameworks (like Prism, MVVM Light and so on). There are a couple of problems in our WPF controls regarding the MVVM pattern and we are trying to eliminate them. However, generally there are no showstoppers that can prevent a developer from using our controls in a MVVM application. Hopefully, our examples, posted on the DevExpress Web Site will convince you in this.

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  • Dan H. explains the DevX MVVM issue here: http://ira.me.uk/2011/03/15/should-i-use-devexpress-wpf-controls-for-a-new-project/#comment-841 (in the blog's comments section) – DeveloperDan May 27 '11 at 14:56
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    -1 -- A link to the root of your web site? You can't get us a more specific location to help us find the "Series of examples which should clarify how our controls can be used under different popular MVVM based frameworks"? This is convincing me more an more that MVVM and DevExpress just don't mix. – Vaccano May 11 '12 at 20:30
  • We are evaluating dev express. I am glad that I came to this place and found how the dev express support would be. Negative PR guys, you would rather better off removing the answer. – Jimmy Oct 11 '12 at 09:50
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    Here are a few links to the product documentation & Support Center that illistrate how to implement MVVM: [MVVM Support - Building Dock UI](http://documentation.devexpress.com/#WPF/CustomDocument11386), [MVVM Support in DXBars, DXRibbon and GalleryControl](http://documentation.devexpress.com/#WPF/CustomDocument10434), Support Center: [How to: Build a dock UI using the MVVM pattern](http://www.devexpress.com/Support/Center/e/E3911.aspx) – Alexander Nov 07 '12 at 08:07
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I do not agree completely with the assertion that DevX developers missed the mark on WPF. However, I will say that it appears they may have had a steep learning curve to overcome. Lets face it, WPF is massive. To master it, even out of the box, is a daunting task. I do agree that DevEx controls will not fit into a MVVM pattern, but they do sit quite nicely in a MVP pattern. "Can you suggest an alternate vendor of WPF controls?" No, but I will suggest that you study additional patterns if you are stuck with DevEx.

Swink
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