I'm in the process of evaluating the purchase of either Telerik or Infragistics, so this is a good opportunity to chime in on my experience.

I started learning C# about three weeks ago, I'm working on a project that I thought would have been a little bit easier than what it is. One thing lead to another and I came to the conclusion for what I wanted, I'll have to learn C# and ASP.NET. One thing lead to another and I started evaluating Telerik and Infragiscs.

I also have to note that I have 18 years of IT experience (wow, that long already?).

First, I was a sucker and purchased the $300 online training for the ASP.NET and found it completely useless, which makes me think that the other training that's offered by Infragistics is probably just as useless.

What I found most lacking about it, is that it states the obvious, slap a control to the form, do a few mouse clicks here, and look, you have an ASP.NET application! I figured out most of what they have in after about 10 seconds of using the controls. In a nutshell, it doesn't go in-depth. I guess it's a good course if you're a very early beginner with no programming experience (and that's coming from someone who started learning C# three weeks ago) that really doesn't know what a control is. If you're an experienced developer, don't bother.

Telerik has a 611 page manual (not counting index) split into a three day course on learning their controls, for FREE. Infragrastics, take a cue from them, most definitely. I found their PDF document quite helpful.

Also, take a cue from Telerik for their documentation. They give you examples, Take the RadGird, I can go to the Rad Grid Help, open it up, then it gives me code examples on how to do Insert/Update/Delete records, how to's, etc. They tell me how to delete a record, tell me there are two available options of doing so, give me an online demo, plus they show me some C# code that I can follow.

With Infragistics (while I have the help working within VS2008), I go to the help, pull out the UltraWebGrid and I don't see much help. I see lots of classes, everything I read in them I find myself thinking, "Well, that's as clear as mud".  From my point of view, again, there is no substance. What’s wrong with it? Well, it’s there, but it doesn’t tell you anything. Sure, it gives me a list of classes, but I want to know how to Insert/Update/Delete records.

Then I decided to chat a sales representative to try and figure out where the support ends and the support begins. I took a spin over to the devcenter, I noticed one of the Issue type's is a "How-To Question". It says "How-To Question, if you have a question regarding the product’s use, such as how to accomplish as task". I've been wondering if you can put a drop down list box in an UltraWebGrid, and since the help file is as clear as mud, I wondered if perhaps if that would land in "a How-To Question". I decided to ask the sales person from the online chat, if that would be an acceptable "How-To Question". The response I got back was pretty much what the help thing said.

Then I asked if they have anything that states explicitly what would be covered for "How-To Questions" if I decided to purchase the priority support with the controls. I got no response, I blinked a few times, decided to get a soda out of the fridge, came back, no response. So I'm thinking, "Are they looking the stuff up or what?”  I got sick of waiting and just closed the chat.

From a beginners prospective, Telerik offered me a 611 page training/manual for FREE, offered me examples with code behind it in their help files, plus a link to a running example of how to do what I'm looking for. They don't offer online chat with a sales representative, but that's ok, I got nothing out of that experience from Infragistics.

Infragistics, for $300 offered me an online training course that dates back about five years, maybe even more in some spots, offers me a help file, which seems to have no substance. The online samples that are offered are ok, but it took me awhile to figure out that I needed to "Open Website" to load them in VS2008, while I was looking for a solution file. It would have been helpful to tell me that in the "Get Going", "Explore the Samples" section, instead of having to find it on the web forums. I was starting to think I was completely missing something until someone else asked the question on the web forums, so either two of us are really missing it or it should really be there.

For the most part, I feel that Infragistics doesn't want a beginner working with their products, but maybe that's not so, because by reading this thread, I find that other customers who have been using Infragistics for years have a hard time with the documentation too. Which doesn't settle very well with me, since I'm a beginner; I'm pretty much not getting ANY support, even if I pay for it, it seems, While I look at Telerik and I'm able to get my questions answered by reading their help files.

Either way, if you want some advice take a look at Telerik's help system and do what they're doing. Second, if you're going to offer online training for $300, make sure that it's better than Telerik’s PDF document, and the person doesn't get the feeling that it was last updated five years ago. Plus make them feel like they learned something instead of making them feel like a sucker for buying it.

I still haven't decided which control set to buy, but after reading other’s experiences in deciding on whether to go with Infragistics or Telerik, then some of the posts I read here, it makes me definitely lean to purchasing Telerik.

I do have to add, that Infragistics support forums are pretty good. I read a lot of the posts that WombatEd has made and I wouldn't have gotten as far as I have without reading through the posts he has made helping other people.

Thanks,

marly

Nope.

That's not my intent.

I simply wanted 'marly' to be aware that there is a pdf version of our documents and also that the Developer's Guide is a resource above the API docs and to bring it to his attention.

Tim

Just wanted to jump in here, uninvited.

 I can tell that you're trying to intercept and intervene when you detect a common problem being expressed as discontent here, but some of that approach may be part of the problem.

IG folks need to hear that customers are having problems with the content/quality/accessibility of the help systems and general documentation.  They're not asking for another document to read explaining how the help system is laid out or how it works.

 Think about that response to a customer stating problems with the documentation.  "Well, here's a document that you can read that will explain how to read the other document, that tells you how to use our systems."

IG simply must start to HEAR that there are problems with organization, presentation, and content in help.

-Jason Lockridge
SmithSystems, Inc.
Los Angeles

Tim,

Yes the pdf's are helpful, but represent only part of an entire help system.

Just so you can understand what frustrates the developers using IG controls, take the following example.

Open the help file (2008V1), in ASP.NET, The Toolset, Controls and Components, WebDialogWindow, API Overview.

Click on ContentPane, then ContentPane Members

In Public Events, click on DataBinding

The page displayed provides the syntax, but displays on information on when this event occurs. I know it is more than likely this has something to do when some form of data binding takes place, but this is just a guess. It is no good simply documenting the syntax without having an explanation or some other link to a page that would explain the event.

There are so many similar instances like that above in the help file, and also many instances where you are searching for an explanation for a feature of one control only to find any explanation or example talking about a different control. OK, I know many controls share common methods etc, but when this is the case, the documentation should reflect this fact.

The above problems simply demonstrate to me that IG has not put enough effort into documentation. I know from experience that most developers do not like spending time on documentation, they would much rather be developing the next system, version etc. As someone who has project managed development teams, I always found the best method was to prioratize developers time after completing a task :-

1   -   Fix any bugs arising

2   -   Document the code to a level that passes any QA requirements (supervised by QA and Technical Authors)

3   -   Code the next system

By restricting developers coding until they have fully completed the last system they developed, always seemed to focus their attention to producing good code and documentation.

Again I state that I think IG controls are generally superior to competitors, but they are catching up rapidly, and are not far behind. Unless IG pays some attention to these documentation issues, I can easily see their market share diminishing in the long term.