I have been using the Infragistics UltraWebGrids for a few years now in multiple products, but have reached a crossroads with them. I have been looking into the Telerik products and they appear to perform better than the Infragistics grids in the demos.
The following are the things I'm looking to know.
1. Which would you use and why.
2. Which grid performs better.
3. Which product is quicker to implement.
4. Which product is easier to maintain.
Go Telerik. And if you get 80 more rep at the time of writing this you might get a free license.
https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/20849/thanks-to-both-stackoverflow-and-telerik-for-the-awesome-promotion
I use Telerik at work. I use to use Infragistics a while back. Telerik is way easier to use and seems fast enough for me. I never had performance issues with them.
Clearly Telerik!
I work with their controls for years - and also with some competitor suites (what shall I do if the customer....)
Anyhow telerik was the best I ever used.
And it's so easy to use this thing - I blogged about it.
http://manni-at.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!82CF2A6C0D0C6F3C!224.entry
Last not least you will see the same editing cappabilities with their Silverlight suite sooner or later. This means there is such an Editor for Silverlight - but (at the moment) it has not all features.
Once I started using Teleriks Suite, I have NEVER looked anywhere else. It has everything I need hands down.
As everyone else has already pointed out Telerik are the way to go - with one caveat - make sure you take the support option too. Their documentation is really bad, the forums are slow (and responses take ages) but their support guys are excellent. Send them a repro and they'll send you back a working version within a day.
There is a couple comments of how bad Telerik's documentation. If you think Telerik is bad, you will most likely go crazy trying to find anything in Infragistics.
This question was asked a while ago but Telerik has came out with KendoUI now. Depending on what you need, I HIGHLY recommend that suite more than any.
See this blog post.
http://www.jerryodom.com/technology/telerik-mvc-infragistics-mvc-on-a-1-day-comparison
Telerik is easier to Infragistics.
And Infragistics MVC control does not "Menu" control yet.
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Closed 10 years ago.
We started a new project and the nature of the project is very interactive and a Rich UI is required.
We would need a set of controls that would require for Rich UI development. I found Obout while googling. I never heard about them and never seen fellow members telling me such name except Telerik, ComponentOne, NetAdvantage. These are the famous names we heard but no this one.
But, the controls give a positive feeling. But as two things matter always when you are buying some services: How good are their customer support? and How much feasible their price is?
Another, how quickly they release patches/updates? As, what if we find a bug or an error during development what will going to happen? Do they provide a quick solution for this?
I'm bit confused making a decision here. I need your assistance, experience and feedback.
I've used Obout controls before. They are definitely lesser known than something like Telerik or ComponentOne, but they've been around for quite a while and definitely put out a quality product. They are also a good deal less expensive. Overall I had a very positive experience with them and never had any trouble with support requests at all. My first experience with them was about 5 years ago and they were very good then, and they've only gotten better.
I don't know specifically how quickly they put out releases, but I can tell you that over the past few years they have released a whole lot of new stuff. I believe you can download all the controls and try them out before you buy them, so I would encourage you to do that. If it meets your needs and you find it easier to use than the alternatives then go for it.
Also check out this question to see some additional feedback: Obout controls in C# .Net
Don't think so. I bought their suite and everytime i tried to use one of their controls, it sucked.
Example 1.
I use their grid and want to take advantage of the filtering options. For 400 records, the grid only filters in the twenty records that are on the first page. So it leaves out the majority of the records. I got in contact with their support and i sent them the files they asked for. That was five month ago and despite repeated tries and emails, i never got an answer.
Example 2:
Today i am using their datepicker. Nice try, but it opens in a weird position on the page and there is no possibility to change that.
We have been using their tools for over a year now, and we are very pleased with them. The cost is a fraction of what the competition is charging. They work great, they look nice and it reduced our development so that our project was completed two months before expected, even with learning the new tools.
The learning curve is a little steep, but that goes for any of the comparable packages. The tech support sucks, by email only. When we first purchased it they had a support forum and you could find most of your answers in the forum, but sadly they did away wit hit. Now it takes a few days to get a response. But when doing an entire application, we had plenty of pages to work on while waiting for responses. Most of the time they pointed out the problems or told us how to resolve them. And I sent them many messages telling them to disregard previous queries, having found the answers on the internet.
Their examples are simple, and if your needs are simple they will suffice. If building a full-blown application to replace a legacy application and run your business, such as we did, you need better support. Still, it was money well spent. We use the grid and filters to perform searches on our client database of 200,000 records, and can usually find the person we need in less than 10 keystrokes by name alone. Performance is very good on our intranet.
I will note that when I thought I had found bugs in the software, it was just me. A comma where a period should be, bad capitalization, misuse of functions, etc. Javascript is very sensitive with it's syntax and not friendly with error messages, so much time was spent going over code to discover the not-so-obvious errors.
And our demands are probably beyond most peoples needs, our main screen has a combination of a superform and 7 data grids, each of which pops up a modal form for data entry, all within the same web page. But it does the job well. All in all, we have about 60 data entry pages and another 60 reporting pages we created with the oBout tools. The reporting pages allow the users to set report criteria (i.e. dates, clients, products, etc. using popups, calendars, radio buttons, etc.) and pass these to SSRS reports, a sort of ad-hoc reporting. So we created a projects with over 125 web pages and over 150 reports in less than one year, quite an achievement considering the small workforce.
If I were you I'd look strongly at using jQuery and the hundreds of great plug-ins that will provide just about any functionality you need. jQuery is heavily supported and best of all it's free (open source).
It will provide all the client-side functionality you need and it's VERY easy to work with. One of the things you really need to use jQuery is to have control over the id and names of your HTML controls (DOM elements). When you use those third-party control packs (and most of the built-in ones in .net too) you typically lose a good deal of control of the HTML they produce. You can either wait for asp.net 4.0 to come out which will resolve the control id issues or rely on repeater controls and have complete control over the ids and other HTML it produces.
It's well worth the small investment in learning jQuery and the repeater control if you haven't done so already.
I used Obout controls several years ago (from memory, their ASP.Net TreeView and Slidemenu).
I think I had to contact them on a couple of occasions, and received prompt support both times, solving the problem we had.
However, whether their controls (in terms of UI, API) meet your expectations is quite a personal thing- the support is good, but you might find that you don't like the look of them, or the API doesn't fit in with the way you do things (although it was fine for me). You should really evaluate them yourself and see how you get on with them.
if you don't need something too well integrated into asp.net, definetly have a look at extjs. its THE rich ui library.
I am using Obout controls. And clearly I would have done another choice If I could. The controls are bulky and quite often buggy when you try to inherits from them. A poor choice to me.
Here's my particular situation...
I have a decent amount of experience with webforms, and I must say, a lot of it has been pretty frustrating. I like that there are lots of built-in controls, but then I discover that they don't quite do what I want, out of the box. I end up rolling my own controls (that inherit from the built-in controls), such as GridViewThatCanSortItself or GridViewThatHasASelectionColumn (these may not have been the actual names, but you get the idea). I've often wondered, while struggling mightily to build such classes, whether figuring out the often convoluted event model was worth it. My attempts to use css to style things have been frustrating as well. There are some ASP.NET controls that will result in one html tag for one set of attributes and a different tag with another set of attributes. You don't realize this until you notice your css only works half the time.
So, my brain starts to wonder, could ASP.NET MVC be the answer? Reading some of the posts on SO has basically given me the impression that, while webforms definitely has its issues, I'd only be trading one set of problems for another. It even seems like Microsoft is trying to talk me out of it:
Quote from the asp.net site (http://www.asp.net/learn/mvc/tutorial-01-cs.aspx)
ASP.NET MVC...works well for Web applications that are supported by large teams of developers and Web designers who need a high degree of control over the application behavior.
That is really not me. Most of my projects are relatively small, and I'm usually the only programmer. I sometimes need to create very custom or unusual UI's, but I definitely don't have a team of programmers who can build components for me.
There is also the issue of javascript. I have a definite working knowledge of html and css, but I can't say the same for javascript. As clumsy and bloated as they are, I've been able to do some smooth enough looking things with UpdatePanels. I'm not sure how much time I'd need to spend just learning the javascript to be able to handle even simple AJAX scenarios in ASP.NET MVC.
I'm about to start working on a relatively simple and small web app, so now would be the time to take the plunge if I'm going to take the plunge. This app will use a SQL Server Express (2005 or 2008) back-end, and I'm thinking of also trying out SqlMetal as an ORM solution. So, that's already one thing I'm going to have to learn, although I at least have experience with--and really like--LinqToXml and LinqToObject. The pages of the web app will have some data grids (some with link columns), input boxes, labels, drop-down lists, check boxes, radio buttons, and submit/action buttons. I don't foresee anything more complicated than that. There will be about six or seven pages total.
Questions:
Given my experience, how painful will it be to learn ASP.NET MVC? Will it be worth it?
I've read some earlier questions comparing webforms to MVC, so I'm curious, How has MVC evolved over the past year or so? Is there anything new that would make the learning curve less steep?
Do I literally have to write code to generate all html by hand or are there code/libraries readily available in the community to assist with the process? (I know I read something about "html helpers"--that may be what I'm asking about here.)
Any other advice?
Update
Another question that occurred to me: Is the transition from ASP.NET webforms to MVC anything like going from standard WPF (using code-behind) to MVVM? I found learning WPF itself to be pretty challenging (and I still couldn't say I really get everything about it), but learning to work with WPF using the MVVM pattern was a relatively painless transition. So, I'm wondering how similar a jump it is to go from webforms to ASP.NET MVC.
My advice is to work through the Nerd Dinner Tutorial from the first chapter of Professional ASP.NET MVC (and then buy the whole book, it's great) to get a feel for how it fits together and how it works for you. This covers most of what you are concerned about above.
You will have to get your hands dirty with regards working with raw HTML but this is no way near as terrifying as it may sound. Especially as you're having issues where Web Forms takes control.
Yes, Asp.Net Mvc might be a solution for your problems.
I would highly recommend you not to rush
(without better knowledge you will end up at disappointment).
But in either way - it definitely be worth it. You will learn a lot.
Start with bunch of sample applications while reading some books (start with Sanderson`s, continue with Mvc In Action). Familiarize yourself with asp.net mvc. It demands different way of thinking about web development you are likely used to. And don't be afraid of 3rd party tools - get used to them because asp.net mvc does not focus on 'ready 2 drop through designer and use' solutions and lack of super cool and shiny (with awful js/html underneath) controls at start really frightens.
After few weeks of playing around with it - you will actually be able to answer this question yourself.
And that's the one and only answer that's worth something.
Personally - i prefer asp.net mvc framework and don't want to go back despite that in some cases it does take more work (i.e. - implementation of custom pagination (which can be easily made way more sophisticated than one that pagination control provides)).
Framework demands better knowledge of OOP, architecture and design knowledge, good sense of code tidiness because there is much less 'signs' that provide direction of one and correct way of doing things - they must be figured out in most cases by yourself. So - it is easier to drown in your own sh*t, html tag soup etc. if you are unsure and/or don't know what you are doing.
I kind a disagree with that statement about large developer team. This is where knowledge about OOP, 'convention over configuration' and extensability of Mvc framework comes into play. As i see it - it's way more easier (this is really really subjective) to write code that's reusable. And with features like templates (in mvc version no2) count of code lines is reduced drastically.
And learn javascript. You are missing a lot. Play around with jQuery if you haven't done that yet (greatly reduces cross-browser compability problems). Firebug plugin for FireFox is a great aid at this (for debugging purposes). AJAX`ifying your mvc website might seem awkward at first (there's a great tips in 'Mvc in action' book about this topic like form hijacking that can be used to achieve so called progressive enchancement with AJAX), but once you get used to JS - it feels superb. One thing to mention - JS is quite sharp tool (if you don't drop what you know about development in .NET environment and don't use it as it's supposed to). It's easy to screw up JS code base in no time.
Another thing - there's a bunch of myths about mvc framework along those who have touched only web forms.
It is not hard to work with raw html.
It is not hard to read form values (binding mechanism is excellent and easily customizable/extensible).
I'm sure there are more. Just can't remember at the moment. :)
#DanThMan, I had the same reservations you did when I first took a look at the framework but having worked with it now for some time there is no way, given the choice, that you'd get me back into WebForms.
I also write, from time to time, small applications where I am the only developer and I thank God I stuck to the MVC framework and took the time to really learn it.
In my mind it has made programming fun again and I can now maintain sites quickly and easily which is a first.
For my money this is the way to go but it's a steep learning curve and you need time to get to really understand it. If you have the time I'd say go for it.
There's some good answers here and some good ones in other threads as well. I'll take a stab at a question that hasn't really been addressed yet.
How has MVC evolved over the past year
or so? Is there anything new that
would make the learning curve less
steep?
I made a conscious switch to MVC about 8 months ago and haven't looked back. Version 1 was stable and I began to use it on a couple of sites with the help of a couple of books and the internet of course. Resources were good back then but since I switched things have really blown up in a good way.
There are a couple of books out there for version 1 that are top notch (Steve Sanderson's - Pro ASP.NET MVC Framework and the Nerd Dinner book come to mind). And there is definitely asp.net MVC blood in the water so I imagine there will be some great version 2 books down the line.
The developer community, especially here, is excellent and it's getting better. "asp.net-mvc" is currently the 16th most used tag on this site and often has a very high amount of views per question. As of today I have yet to have a question that hasn't been answered. There's a lot of smart people looking at the MVC questions who are willing to help.
The contrib library over at codeplex is also getting better and getting some nice participation. They've done a great job of filling in some holes that version 1 has left. I can only think that this will continue to get stronger as MVC gets older.
The new features for version 2 are in my opinion awesome. I won't name my favorites as they won't mean much to you if you haven't played with MVC much but just know that the development team has listened and included a number of great enhancements for the new version. They are very actively seeking feedback and always looking for improvements. Do not expect this change anytime soon. (One day I called up Microsoft and said "Shorten '[AcceptVerb(Http.Post)]' to '[HttpPost]'" and bam, Mvc 2 was my idea.)
The point I'm trying to make is: since I made the switch I've seen things get better and better. I'm incredibly happy with my decision and I'm excited for the future of this project. Version 1 is good, Version 2 is better and I can't wait to see what 3, 4, and 5 ... hold.
And I'll leave you with this: I've now converted a number of friends from WebForms to MVC. Every single one of the them is glad they made the switch and the ones that work with all aspects of an application (C# code, html, css, javascript, data access, unit testing, etc) will never go back and are loving the asp.net MVC life.
Given my experience, how painful will it be to learn ASP.NET MVC? Will it be worth it?
Yes and yes. It will be painful and it will be worth it and here's why. You will be a better programmer for it and your skills will more easily transfer to other platforms. MVC is a very common pattern that you will find over and over again in just about every popular language.
You will be working more closely with html, javascript, and css, but that's web programming and you're better off biting the bullet sooner than later.
having worked my last few projects (prior to embracing mvc) using my own controls being rolled via the HtmlTextWriter, I actually found th transition quite straightfwd. i have to say tho', i did put it off until v1.0 was well and truly 'out there' and only made strides from aug/sept 09. i'm glad i got into it as the main reasons i had been using the HtmlTextWriter in webforms was to overcome some of the basic issues of class names and id's when using jquery. i'm not going to say that v1 is a silver bullet but it certainly just works in tandem with my mindset at the moment. as for literature, i too read the sanserson and nerd dinner books and took plenty away from them. at the same time, i also got into subsonic v3 and found a fair amount of tips on rob's site to get me going.
i seriously can't imagine having to go 'back' to the webforms paradigm as i had been looking for a way to drop the page lifecycle and controls bloat for such a long time (i had even looked at php framewirks at one point as a way out of the webforms dilema - kohana is a great little php framework).
anyway, just my scottish 2 pence worth...
merry xmas all and a happy 2010
jimi
Some developers seem to have an aversion to component-oriented programming. For others, it feels natural. If you find yourself constantly fighting the standard components, then it's easy enough to roll your own from scratch--which you would basically end up doing in MVC anyway. If you find yourself fighting the unit test model with web forms, you will find things easier with MVC.
However, MVC isn't a cure-all; there's a lot to learn. Some apps will be less complex than with web forms, and some will be much more complex.
I've found that web forms don't really gel with many developers until they deeply understand the page life cycle and use of ViewState. Until that point, there seems to be a lot of trial and error -- but it's easier to learn that than MVC with IOC, etc. As far as customizing output, it's often easier to use control adapters than to subclass the control. In case it helps, I walk through these issues from the web forms side in my book: Ultra-Fast ASP.NET.
In the end, I think it's partly a mindset thing, and which model fits the way you solve problems and think about your application better.
There are lots of articles and discussions about the differences between ASP.NET WebForms and ASP.NET MVC that compare the relative merits of the two frameworks.
I have a different question for anyone who has experience using WebForms that has since moved to MVC:
What is the number one thing that WebForms had, that MVC doesn't, that you really miss?
Edit
No-one has mentioned the WebForms validation controls. I am now working on some code that has a few dependant validation rules and implementing client-side validation for these is proving slow.
As a PHP/Classic ASP person, I ventured into webforms world about 5 years ago. After having to handcode things like table grids, calendars, etc, in scripting languages, it seemed like webforms would be a tremendous helping-hand. It was...that is until you need even a slight bit of customization beyond alternating row colors and the like. Yeah, you could have a gridview running with a few drag-and-drop motions. But customizing even what would seem like a simple thing could turn into hours of torture and research.
I also think a lot of the examples given in .NET online are oversimplified for the effect of making webforms look "easy". Sure you can get that gridview to show only 10 records of a 100,000 record table, but do you realize that ALL of the records are being loaded into memory by default? As an example of the over-complicatedness of rectifying that problem, I spent a while creating a pageable gridview that only loads chunks of records, but it wouldn't work. After an hour of research, I found that you had to delete an extra property that the IDE inserts into the codebehind. Not fun when stupid stuff like that sets you behind.
And at every turn, it happens.
Don't even get me started on viewstate.
But then the clouds parted, and .NET MVC was handed to us. Now THAT is a framework. If you are a web developer, you should know whats happening when someone makes a request to your webserver. The abstraction and layer of cruft that webforms put on top of that is a disservice.
For the most part, I'm able to develop applications at the speed of PHP scripting and FINALLY have TOTAL control over the UI. That's what it's all about.
And as an additional note: People need to stop complaining that they are creating "tag soup" in MVC views when they find they have to use <%= %> tags and the like. Drag and drop your gridview onto the page, set all the properties, then view the crap it gives you. And your not nearly done yet, now you have to attach events and put more gridview-related code in your codefile. Talk about messing up the coding experience. I'll take a simple foreach loop anyday.
nothing :)
I really like the way ASP.NET MVC works. I want to control my HTML. I don't need controls. We can get the same functionality with HTML helpers and third party tools, e.g. jQuery and all the available plugins.
Here's an example on how to use a gridview-like with jQuery grid on ASP.NET MVC.
Although Ruby on Rails is a more mature framework, I do think that ASP.NET MVC is on the right track.
I miss the gridview, the simplicity of getting built in sorting and paging in with very little effort. I use grid functionality all the time and have still not found a good alternative in mvc
Well I do miss something :
the ability to have a pageable grid in seconds.
Although it wouldn't be very fair since I also had to create a class to feed to the ObjectDataSource to have an efficient pagination. And also the pagination would work only with the JavaScript on or I would have to write code to read the QueryString (for ex. &pag=2 etc.) and so on.
In fact... I guess there isn't much too miss.
The simplicity of having only one form on a page. I think the html form functionality is kind of awkward and not very intuitive and I guess there is a good reason why the webforms creators tried to abstract away form handling in webforms.
One difference, which I am sure will be rectified over time, is the expansive amount of reference material and examples online for web forms versus the relatively sparse amount for MVC. However, one could argue that a lot of the material on web forms covers topics such as the page life cycle which MVC no longer makes necessary (thank goodness).
Until now nothing really.
I definitely miss MVC every day at work while I look at the ugly WebForms code I want to wipe it all out and now make everything transparent, clean and beautiful.
Of course only time will show whether the new girl is really better than your old wife.
As crazy as it sounds, I miss the calendar control. Not for datepickers or that sort of thing, but for scheduling apps where you want to show a full page month-at-a-glance/outlook style events calendar with selectable or clickable links that you inject via the day render event.
If anyone knows of an MVC alternative, please share! Rolling your own in this case is doable, but kind of a pain.
Viewstate is the thing i miss - until i remember problems it causes.
Then i bend my mind and look for another approaches (smarter model binding, ajax etc.) which usually turns out to be better (but slower to find & implement).
The main thing I miss is the documentation. WebForms, because of it's relative maturity, has a lot of official documentation and also a lot of 3rd party examples and snippets available. However, this is improving all the item and, as MVC gains momentum, I hope it will be on a par.
Nothing as well.
WebForms do so much automatically but frequently I had to hack it to suit my needs.
MVC let me do what I want and I can hack it to get things done better/faster.
I love to control the output and prefer clean, lightweight style.
Output Caching is not really implemented in ASP.NET MVC (as of version 2). There are tricks to get it working, like using Web Controls with the OutputCache directive, or using WriteSubstitution, but all these tricks go against the nature of MVC in some way. Output Caching for anything other than entire action methods is really tricky to get working in ASP.NET MVC, and always induces enormous technical debt. Since Output Caching, especially in the newer versions of IIS, is incredibly performant compared to data layer caching, this is a shame.
simplicity in Dragging and dropping controls.
might be seeing some of this in the near future maybe in mvc4
Reference :- http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/808297/Things-you-will-miss-in-ASP-NET-MVC-as-an-ASP-NET
I will not say i miss because all the changes are happening for good. But yes i would miss the below
The lovely server controls who just give output in a blink.
The behind code file.Double clicking and going to the Code behind for some reason made me superior.
Viewstate magic.
Now i need to get in to headache of POST and GET.
Will anyone suggest good 3rd party controls for asp.net development.
Especially gridview.tabcontrols,treeview.Menu
Please suggest controls which scores well on all points below
Easy development,
good performance in run time.
Less page overhead and less page
objects etc.
faster page loading.
I used few but had bad experience on page performance.
Thanks
Swapna MC
The consensus here at SO seems to be DevExpress. Telerik and ComponentArt are good, too. DevExpress seems to be the fastest performer.
How about "obout" controls.
This is suggested by some one .But i am facing performance issues now.Page load is very slow.I am not sure its the controls causing the problem.
swapna
I have experience with Telerik and DevExpress. As others have noted, DevExpress is probably the fastest; however, I still strongly prefer Telerik. Their big advantage is that they have been around a very long time and have a huge support database. Compared to every other .Net control library I've worked with, theirs is, by far, the easiest to get help for.
Considering that each library will have its own nuances and bugs, going with the one with the most vibrant user community and support forum is a smart move.
One more point, DevExpress's AspXPivotGrid is fantastic. Clients absolutely love pivot grids, and they are a smart move for the first report and clients will cut you a lot of slack when they can build their own reports.
telerik asp.net ajax controls provide a quite rich client-side api. it's their most attractive side for me.
I need to make a client able to drag and drop images into category-folders in an ASP.NET 3.5 web-app.
I was hoping that an option existed, that was almost as easy to use as the Reorderlist from Ajax Control Toolkit, and where I did not have to look into JQuery or similar handcoding.
What are your recommendations?
Similar questions have been asked before, like this 6 months ago...: ASP.net AJAX Drag/Drop? where MooTools is recommended, but 6 months is a long time in the ASP.NET/Ajax world, so maybe a better and even simpler option exists now?
Commercial components are also an option - well up to 200$ anyway.
My experience with the Reorder List in the Ajax Control Toolkit, as with many other 3rd party providers, is that most of them don't seem to be worth the effort. Definitely try them before you buy.
Unfortunately a lot of the samples/components out there are all too client-based and always seem to fall short on real-world uses and the sorts of interaction you need with ASP.Net applications (e.g. handling postback). Dragging a div around isn't that complicated, but that's all a lot of examples do. If your needs don't exactly mirror their offering try something else.
The Manning book ASP.NET AJAX in Action is a good reference on code for performing drag and drop. It uses Microsoft.Web.Preview, but this hasn't been updated in quite some time which is a worry. I have created a pretty good drag and drop UI with MS's PreviewDragDrop, it does work cross-browser, and it's pretty easy to code. Preview DLL's aside, the Manning book is great for understanding Microsofts AJAX API.
However, since jQuery is going to be shipped and supported with Visual Studio, I would recommend using it over anything else in a vain attempt to future-proof yourself.
A final piece of advice is never outsource your core competency. If this page is a core part of your offering you're better off implementing it yourself using library code like jQuery or Microsoft.Ajax rather than relying on a 3rd party component. However, if it's just a minor part of your site, then go ahead and use 3rd party controls.
Ref: My Version of Microsoft.Web.Preview.dll is 1.1.61025.0.
i have been very very happy with telerik's treeview control and use it for almost any asp.net application which needs a treeview drag and drop.
they allow free development licenses (not production though) so i guess you should give it a try. go to www.telerik.com and have a look
This is another Mootools suggestion, but you might find the Mif.Tree plugin useful. It's an MIT license. There are also code examples for each of the demos and API docs.
Robert>>
After spending 4-5 painful days of hacks, double-hacks and hacks to get around other hacks, I have come to the same conclusion as you. Especially the reorderlist from the ajax control toolkit drove me to the very edge of insanity.
It seems to me there is no real way around learning JQuery and simply doing the stuff myself. I used to shy away from doing client-side code, but with AJAX so much code has moved away from being just serverside.
JQuery has just been moved to the top of my personal study program.
Jquery has drag and drop controls.
Link
Maybe that will help...