I am starting a WPF project, which will be fairly complicated in complexity and will make use of a lot of modern UIs, like outlook bar, grids, tabs, etc… I’ve looked around in the marketplace and there aren’t too many control suites. Some of the available ones are either Beta or CTP. Others don’t look too polished. Yet others are pretty nice looking.
At this point, today, should I buy or, bite the bullet and build my own? What are the experiences people are having with 1st generation control suites?
The thing to remember is that WPF is very different from WinForms, you can do amazing things buy just re-skining existing controls, when you are starting your first WPF big project you don’t yet understand WPF and you don’t know the possibilities and pitfalls of the system.
I suggest you start developing the project without those controls and add them later, that way when you get around to adding those controls you will have a better feel of what controls you need and what controls are a trivial customization of an existing control.
If you need anything that isn’t trivial it’s better to buy – but only if the component you buy is good, so evaluate carefully.
and read Joel’s ‘In Defense of Not-Invented-Here Syndrome’ at http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000007.html