Your Voice, Your Choice

Notwithstanding a tight economy, ASP.NET developers remain keen on third-party products, as evidenced by the participation in the 2009 asp.netPRO Readers' Choice Awards voting. This year, the asp.netPRO community cast more than 8,000 total votes on dozens of products in 25 categories, ranging from add-in tools to code editors to various components, controls, and specialized tools.

Old Favorites and a New Category

This year's voting results included many of the 2008 Readers' Choice Award winners, among them perennial favorites Developer Express and Telerik, taking the winner and runner-up positions, respectively, in the Charting and Graphics Tool, Component Set, Grid, Navigation Control, Online Editor, Printing/Reporting Tool, Silverlight, and Utility categories. Additionally, Developer Express took first place in the Add-in and Community Resource (for its DevExpress Community Site) categories, while Telerik won the Testing/QA Tool category with Telerik WebUI Test Studio (powered by ArtOfTest).

Offering a nod to the emergence of the Silverlight platform and its growing use among ASP.NET developers, asp.netPRO added Silverlight as a new product category in the Readers' Choice Awards. In this category, Developer Express, Telerik, and ComponentOne were readers' top three choices: Developer Express AgDataGrid Suite, Telerik RadControls for Silverlight, and ComponentOne Studio for Silverlight. About 43 percent of Readers' Choice Award voters chose a product in this category, a sign that ASP.NET professionals are getting more interested in Silverlight development tools.

Rising Stars

Notably, some new names appeared in this year's list of finalists. For instance, for the first time, DotNetNuke Professional Edition placed in the Content Management System category, taking the runner-up spot. Another newcomer to the winner's circle, 360 IMPACT's ASP.NET Auto Email, took first place in the Email Control category, beating out Advanced Intellect's aspNetEmail, which had won or received runner-up in the category for the previous four years. Other products appearing for the first time in at least three years among the list of Readers' Choice Award category winners include FarPoint Spread for ASP.NET (Honorable Mention, Grid); Applied Innovations and MaximumASP (Runner-up and Honorable Mention, Hosting Service); ASPSmith.com's ASP.NET Training (Winner, Training); and, of course, the three products winning awards in the Silverlight category.

The Vote That Matters

Ultimately, the vote that matters to ASP.NET vendors is whether customers ASP.NET professionals like you choose and stay with their products. The fact that a number of vendors have received Readers' Choice awards several years running bodes well for the reputation of these vendors and their products among asp.netPRO readers. As asp.netPRO Executive Editor Sheila Molnar mentions in her editorial this month, third-party vendors serve a vital role in enhancing and extending the basic foundation that Microsoft has laid with its products. But you, the developers, are the actual users and ultimate beneficiaries of these tools. As such, your voice and your choice of this year's Readers' Choice Award recipients is the one that matters the most.

Anne Grubb ([email protected]) is web and developer strategic editor for asp.netPRO, Windows IT Pro, SQL Server Magazine, and System i NEWS, and editor of the asp.netNOW newsletter.