A big thank you to DevExpress for this unsung hero of the suite. It came along at just the right time for me. I have been developing very simple piece of software for a client. I say simple it is a process of collecting information, calculating a fee and issuing a receipt. The original piece of software was developed and resulted in quite a busy screen that looks quite daunting when first used. We did look at using other interface elements (tab controls etc) to tidy up the screen but once used to the software these then slow down the user.

As the wizard was delivered by DevExpress I thought I would "knock something up" and quickly took each element of the process and gave it its own wizard page. The users now only have to concentrate on one part of the process at a time and training has been minimal. Once they are used to the process a tick box is used to switch to the "busy" interface and each set of controls relating to a wizard tab is held in its own panel to aid the transition. People are used to using wizards to achieve other things in other software so they find it very familiar.

When I originally suggested a wizard interface I found resistance mainly because of the time taken to develop the interface - no problems there then! And the fact that this would slow people down once they become familiar with the system - the code is (largely) the same only the interface toggles.

Once again DevExpress have provided a solution to a problem that I didn't previously have, allowing me to look at things differently, develop a popular solution that answers all of my users concerns and it really was a time saver. I spend so much time looking at the whole package (I have the Universal subscription) and start architecting my solutions around that but find the most satisfaction often comes from little things when the use of one control can make a big difference.