Grids suck

I’ve heard a lot of people ask, “What is the benefit in moving to WPF? I’m just making a plain line of business app I don’t need any special effects.”  Well I think that using WPF there is one thing that it really makes stand out – Grid suck.

I know all you winform enthusiasts out there are saying, “Have you seen the DataGridView? I can create a list in seconds.” Well I’ve got news for you DataGridViews suck too.

I’m not talking about from the programming point of view, you’re right nothing compares to the DataGridView for quickly showing data. The problem is from the user experience point of view, it’s ugly and anything more than three columns is really hard to use.

So here is the big problem with WinForms, it’s hard to create “ViewAll” screens without using a DataGridView, as such you don’t bother with anything else. So if you want a reason to change to WPF, you no longer need the DataGridView.

Instead of Grids WPF focuses strongly of List Items. You provide a template for one item – and it’s as customisable as you like, any control can go in it, you can use multiple lines – and it repeats that template for every item in the list.

Extended DataGridView for WinForms

I while back I made a extension to the DataGridView and an article about it. For those who still have to use WinForms I would highly recommend it.

It’s avaliable on CodeProject at Extending the DataGridView.