Providing a Compelling User Experience in our Products

Since Infragistics designs the software for software-designers like yourself, we think about UX on two levels:

  • There is the User Experience you receive when you use our products and services, and
  • the User Experience for your end users who we want to have a compelling experience when they are using your software.

Although we didn't coin it as such originally, our company has been supplying users worldwide with a good UX for years but now we are going to crank it up a notch with the Experience Design Group and a greater UX focus in our products. Right now you will find the following selection of features that you receive today out-of-the box go above-and-beyond providing extremely rich user functionality and this is just what you can do today.

User Experience for Developers, Designers and Architects

For Developers

  • World-Class Developer Support - We back up our products with 24/5 developer support whose focus is to always delight the customer.  With Developer Support available around the clock, you can be assured that no matter what time-zone you are in, there is a support engineer on duty.
  • Extensive Product Documentation - From API reference to developer guides, both online and local, our documentation helps developers learn the product's ins and outs.
  • Quick Design - An immersive and intuitive approach to rapid application development.  The Quick Design control designers give a wizard-like experience, placing an emphasis on task based design, and avoiding the 'property grid design experience'.
  • Feature Picker - Abstracting away the API, the Feature Picker groups logical properties groups into high level Features, allowing developers to quickly enable common functional 'chunks'. 
  • Specialized Property Editors provide a friendly editing experience
    • Style Editor - Provides a visual alternative to editing styles in the property grid.
    • Transform 3D Charting Editor - Enables real-time, visual positioning of 3D charts.
    • Client-Side Events Editor - Not only does this editor generate a Javascript function stub for you, but it will even switch to the HTML view of your page, and bring you directly to the newly added function handler.
  • Embedded Resources - Simplifies deployment by embedding certain resources such as scripts and integral images, directly into the NetAdvantage assemblies.
  • Centralized Administration through Web.Config - With a special Web.Config section dedicated to NetAdvantage, developers can control important aspects of their application including your Javascript directory, Image directory, CSS directory, and Application Styling style set name and -path across all NetAdvantage for ASP.NET controls, from a single point.
  • Visual Studio® 2005 Design-Time Features
    • ASP.NET controls respond to clicks similar to how they do at runtime (e.g., tabs, listbar buttons, etc.), allowing for a rich editing experience that doesn't revolve around a property grid.
    • Interactive Design Surface allows you to edit textual elements inline, without resorting to the property grid.
    • Smart Tags provide a property grid alternative that follows a more task-oriented approach to application development.
    • Editable content regions on controls replace the user unfriendly Template Editor.  Not only can you edit content directly without tripping over a Template Editor, but nested controls will automatically be accessible as page level members from the code behind - making "FindControl" a distant memory.
  • Visual Studio 2008 Design-Time Features
    • Quickly design NetAdvantage for WPF controls without going into the XAML markup.
    • Our ASP.NET controls support binding to the new LinqDataSource control introduced by the latest version of .NET.
  • Two-Way Databinding - When using the .NET Framework 2.0 DataSource Controls, the Grid supports two-way databinding to simplify data access.  Simply specify the DataSourceID on the Grid, and you're done.  No need to call DataBind, no need to manually update your backend based on UpdateCell events ... it really is that simple.
  • Store and Re-use settings with Presets - Bundle coordinated property settings for look and feel and behavior in XML based preset files.  Presets can be applied at design-time, that will actually toggle the property values of the control, or they can be applied at runtime through the code behind.
  • Application Styling Framework™ - Separates design from function using industry standards and out-of-the-box professionally designed UI.  The ASF is responsible for creating a UI Role based CSS inheritance mechanism for NetAdvantage controls, which places all styling aspects into standards friendly stylesheets.  Because the ASF uses well known css class names, developers can quickly design their applications using a stylesheet stub, without going through the pains of manually setting a "CssClass" property on individual UI Elements - saving hours of tedious work.  And because of the best practices approach to CSS through UI Role based Inheritance, styling your NetAdvantage based application becomes a simple task.

For Designers

  • Separation of Tooling and Concerns - NetAdvantage AppStylist® gives designers a tool specifically for them to hide the technical details of the implementation platform.
  • Independent Design Surface - Design look and feel independently of the application via AppStylist canvases.  No need for Visual Studio, no need for any code - AppStylist truly provides a stand-alone solution for styling.
  • Familiar Tools - AppStylist uses paradigms and toolboxes that are familiar to graphics designers, significantly reducing the learning curve.
  • Prepackaged Style Libraries - Professionally-designed style libraries provide an advanced starting point for designers to customize.
  • Express Styling - Enables designers to easily generate attractive styles from templates as another starting point for customization.

For Architects

UX for Our Users' Users (End Users — Everybody Touched by Infragistics-Powered Software)

Essentially everything we provide in our products is geared toward providing better user experience for the end user.  The primary value we add is that we make it possible for our users (developers and designers) to deliver great user experience on time and on budget.

So all you have to do is look around at our products and their features to get an idea of how our products enable great end user experience.  Here are a few highlights:

These are but a few of ways that end-user experience is enhanced through Infragistics products.  In addition to the in-product benefits, Infragistics offers additional guidance through its Experience Design Group with exemplars, relieving the burden of every designer and developer to have to become a bonafide UX expert on their own, and there is professional training and consulting to help you become as proficient as possible in supplying great UX to your end users.  Infragistics is all about UX.