General Comments on 2008v1?? | Infragistics Forums

Hello there. I've been working with Infragistics tools for about two years now. The one thing I have seen over and over again, on just about every control, and most recently on the Web Schedule set of controls, is the complete and utter lack of real world examples and help documentation on creating applications that require customization of your controls. Below is the current, frustrating example.

We're creating a calendar application. I started with the month view. I installed your sql scripts to create the database, and delved in to your examples. You had a vb.net example, which used to be rare and was nice to see, but then I quickly realized you had done the usual IG thing and nearly all of the example was in javascript. The codebehinds looked like a ghost town, devoid of code. Javascript is notoriously hard to follow when it gets in to the amount you use, but I gave a big sigh and started in on it anyway. After a week of trying to customize it to what I need, I realized it was useless. First of all, your example uses older versions of some of the controls. Second, I needed to add additional fields to the Add Appointment dialog. The forums were more helpful than your documentation on that, which is common, but even they weren't able to fully explain it. You have one example in the knowledge base, but it describes only half the process. The other half you have to wing it and pray. I had to extend your appointment object, which is fine, but then using that extended appointment object in the custom data provider I had to create was difficult. I had to call your support multiple times. Thankfully, you have a wonderful man named Nainil that apparently knows the WebSchedule stuff inside out. Even he was stumped a couple of times. But eventually I managed to get it all worked out. I have been progamming for 9 years. The other people on my time have been doing this for just as long, or longer. It took us over a month to get this all working correctly. In hindsight, I would rather have just coded my own calendar system than use your control simply for the length of time it took to figure it out, and customize it. At least if I create it myself, I know how the thing works. But I use third-party controls because I want to save time. This is completely unacceptable. By comparison, any new control from Microsoft we can usually figure out and fully impliment, with customizations, in a few days or less. Telerik controls take a little longer, but nowhere near as long as yours.

It's not the controls. Once you figure them out, they're wonderful. It's the samples and documentation, and severe lack of dev presence in your forums (unless they're trying to defend themselves). I know you want to charge everyone for good help, but what you're going to end up doing is just losing customers that would have bought another subscription.

That's my opinion and experience. Others may vary. Have a good one.

Michael J. Collins
Alston & Bird, LLP
Application Development