June Newsletter

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June 2005 Edition - The VB.NET Forums Newsletter



<HR>VB.NET Forums Newsletter Contents:
  • June Review: The Gagnon-Harper Chart (Coupon Offer)
  • AspDotNetStoreFront donates discounts to the VB.NET Community (Coupon Offer)
  • Component Overload!!! Third Party Component Saturation?
  • asp.net PRO Readers Choice Awards - Are you Serious?
  • Advertise on the VB.NET Forums - Affordable Rates

<HR>Latest Review: re-TRAIN your Brain with the Gagnon-Harper Chart



June brings an exciting review of an innovative chart control, in this case, it's called
ch-ART. There is certainly no shortage of .NET chart controls, it's something all the third party vendors seem to be doing these days with the ease of GDI+. However, Cristal Components didn't just produce a GDI+ visual number cruncher; they applied history, mathematics, research, and skill to develop a unique method of visual analysis. There certainly is nothing like the Gagnon-Harper chart on the market, read our review and see why this chart component for .NET sets the bar for charting.


Purchase the Gagnon-Harper chart by the end of June and take $100 OFF! Yes, $100 OFF your purchase using the coupon code: VBDNF0605. Click here to purchase.

Click here to download a FREE trial today


Recent Reviews:

<HR>AspDotNetStoreFront: Affordable/Reliable ASP.NET E-Commerce




As a connoisseur of ASP.NET e-commerce, we've seen them all, used them all, and know which to use, which to avoid. It's certainly not hard to "roll your own" these days with the beauty of ASP.NET, however, why not take advantage of the experts to give you a product you can trust with your business. We are actually shocked the price of AspDotNetStoreFront is not more as this is a full featured product that gets better by the day. The eager and talented developers of this product have their act together, you can see from their web site and the outstanding demo and gallery of customers putting this .NET e-commerce product to use. In need of a multi-lingual e-commerce product? You found it! AspDotNetStoreFront is one of the only multi-lingual e-commerce platforms for ASP.NET we've seen. And rest assured, it's solid!

We've learned a few pointers in shopping for ASP.NET e-commerce products. Here are three phrases to help you end up with a product that is secure and reliable:

1) If the e-commerce vendor's product name starts with "S" - STAY AWAY
2) If the e-commerce vendor's product name starts with "B" - BE AFRAID
3) If the e-commerce vendor's product name starts with "A" - At'a'boy! Get it!


The two winning e-commerce solutions for ASP.NET e-commerce are (in alphabetical order) AbleCommerce and AspDotNetStoreFront.

Take 20% off AspDotNetStoreFront this month when you purchase (good through the end of June) using the coupon code "VBDOTNET". It's already priced too low, but why not take another 20% off, this month only? So check out solid affordable e-commerce with one of the two products we at VB.NET Forums endorse -- AspDotNetStoreFront.

Click here to buy AspDotNetStoreFront and take 20% off with coupon VBDOTNET
(offer expires June 30th)

Click here to download a FREE Trial




<HR>▪ Component Overload: Are you suffering from too much of the same?

In the land of ActiveX, third party components were a life saver for Rapid Application Development (RAD). However, before .NET, popular and useful ActiveX components were typically developed by the C++ community. Although the ActiveX components were o'plenty, the ones that stood out, such as Data Dynamics ActiveReports and ActiveBar were unmatched. Today, however, since the birth of .NET, third party components have been breeding faster than a pack of mice in a farm house!
As developers today, there is one thing in common; there is not enough time in the day to do what we want to get accomplished. We are certainly empowered with the most advanced RAD tools available, thank you Microsoft, however, we take RAD one step further in searching for third party components to help save even more time. The question is, "which component do I use?" Almost all of the vendors are creating the SAME components! Everyone has a menu/toolbar control, they all have chart controls, they are all coming out with report controls, and they all look the same! We need innovation, third party vendors, which is why coming across the Gagnon-Harper Chart in this month's review was such a breath of fresh air - something unique, something creative, something with thought and engineering behind it! On top of the fact every major component vendor is doing the same thing, they are all modeling UI's for all the developers to produce the exact same looking application - Microsoft Outlook or Office!!! Where is your creativity my dear friends? Sure, we all have the alibi "well, if Microsoft did all the research on usability, maybe we should all make our applications look like theirs." Maybe component vendors are suffering from the same "plague" every other developer is suffering from "not enough time, produce, don't think."

My message to third party vendors - we need your skills, your creativity, your uniqueness, please STOP creating the same dang controls!

The next situation we have as developers is choosing which component to use! There are a great selection of suites out there; from Infragistics, Xceed Software, Janus Systems, ComponentOne, Data Dynamics, SharpLibrary, Developer Express, on and on and on...which do I use? Coming from VB6 applications and suffering from having to deploy 15+ megs to our customers, yee haa, we can deploy small applications in .NET. But wait a second, when I'm using this and that from 27 different suites, guess where we end up again!

Yep, it's a dilemma, finding uniqueness and creativity, keeping our applications from looking like Microsoft Outlook, and selecting a component from the plethora of vendors on the market today.

Deep Thoughts...Happy Coding to all....

Neal Culiner
The VB.NET Forums




<HR>asp.net PRO Readers Choice Awards: Are you Serious?

We kept our mouth shut, but we were quite surprised in this years readers choice awards. Isn't this supposed to be for ASP.NET??? Although we love our friends at Data Dynamics, but seeing component suites such as sharpUI on an ASP.NET survey? Come on asp.net PRO, do you have any idea of what is on your survey? Do you program? We saw several cases where credibility of this survey was lost, in fact, viewing last years results also gave us the clue that those behind this survey were not quite up on today's programming world.

Let's take another case that just baffles us. We saw this in at least two product categories, almost half, if not more, voted for the "other" category yet asp.net PRO granted a "winner" to a product with only 20'ish% of the votes! Come on asp.net PRO, if half of your voters are saying "we don't use or like this product" how can you grant them the winner? In fact, you should probably grant them a "loser" award based on several of the categories we viewed. In fact, one product had public evidence of voter fraud, yet you allowed them to continue to win their category (with half the "other" votes) when their evangelists were so brilliant to post on a public forum how many times and from different computers they voted.




<HR>Advertise on the VB.NET Forums:

Interested in promoting your products or business on the exclusive VB.NET Forums community? We have banner ad slots available for your business today. Take advantage of annual pre-pay and get additional advertising months free! Click the banner below to receive an automatic quote for today's affordable rates.

VBForumsBanner.gif




<HR>Visit the VB.NET Forums: Ask, Share, Learn Visual Basic .NET together

Come visit the VB.NET forums and find answers to your questions or help others with their VB.NET questions. Learn from others and hone your skills keeping up with the latest on VB.NET.

We also invite vendors to post new release information and announcements to our Vendors forum. Help us stay up-to-date with your outstanding products.
See you at the forums...


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