Rating: 4 out of 5 stars | Website: www.9rays.net | Price: $99
ASP.NET developers are always on the lookout for controls that will not only help them simplify their daily development tasks but also provide an intuitive look and feel for their applications. You can achieve the required functionality by using the built-in toolbox controls and complex JavaScript and style sheets. But this process takes time and requires skilled manpower. Instead, ASP.NET developers use third-party components such as FlyTreeView for ASP.NET. Developed by 9Rays, the product ships with several features with which you can quickly create nice-looking, themed AJAX-based TreeViews.
A fully functional evaluation version is available for download from the vendor's website. I was able to work with the product within five minutes of installation. The installer doesn’t add the required controls to the Toolbox; you have to manually browse and select the library file located inside the bin directory of the installation directory.
FlyTreeView for ASP.NET includes several features, such as built-in check boxes; radio buttons that include support for context menus; and multiple browsers such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera. The product also supports advanced features such as callbacks, server-side templates, native .NET data binding, drag and drop between TreeViews, and keyboard navigation with full support for Visual Studio 2010 and ASP.NET 4.0.
Using FlyTreeView for ASP.NET
To create a TreeView, you simply drag and drop the control and add the required nodes and child nodes by selecting the Edit Nodes option. You can also connect to a database by creating the required data source, as Figure 1 shows.
Figure 1: Connecting to a database
Moreover, the product ships with about 11 themes that you can pick by selecting the AutoFormat option, shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2: Using the AutoFormat option
I tested the product by creating a simple ASP.NET project and observed that the TreeView loaded faster. I also noticed that themed TreeViews didn’t cause any performance issues, and they consume very little memory.
The product ships with several sample projects in both C# and Visual Basic formats, which you can access from the Start menu folder. The product doesn’t include documentation, even though the vendor provides an API reference guide. I suggest that the vendor provide a detailed help file in HTML Help Format, including video presentations, so that developers can quickly learn how to use the product.
FlyTreeView is useful for developers who are on a tight budget but want to build TreeView-enabled ASP.NET applications in a minimum amount of time.
Anand Narayanaswamy ([email protected]) is a Microsoft MVP and ASPInsider who works as an independent consultant based in Trivandrum, India. He is the author of Community Server Quickly (Packt Publishing) and runs www.learnxpress.com and www.dotnetalbum.com.
