Review: Peter's Date Package 1.1: ASP Alliance

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Review: Peter's Date Package 1.1

page 1 of 5

Published: 08 Apr 2005

Unedited - Community Contributed

Abstract
Almost every web application I build seems to require some sort of date data to be entered. Whether it is credit card expiration dates or start and end dates for a report, I run into this requirement all the time, and the built-in ASP.NET WebControls for capturing this data are lacking, to put it mildly. Peter Blum (of PeterBlum.com) has a solution to this common problem with his Date Package, which I review here. While it's not perfect, it's definitely recommended.

by Steven Smith
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Article Contents:

Introduction

I have been meaning to do a review of Peter’s Date Package for quite some time, and finally got around to it a few weeks ago. I had figured on the review only taking me a relatively short amount of time, because I needed to use some date selection controls in an application I was building. I figured I’d use Peter's controls, write what I thought about them, and kill two birds with one stone. Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite that easy, because this date package includes a lot more than just a couple of date selection controls. To do justice to the product, I had to spend time with each control, and put the complete collection through some tests.

The following controls are installed with Peter’s Date Package 1.1:

DateTextBox
MonthYearTextBox
AnniversaryTextBox
DateTextBoxValidator
DateTextBoxMinMaxValidator
DateTextBoxCompareValidator
DateTextBoxDifferenceValidator
UnselectedDatesValidator
CS_Calendar
PopupCalendar
MonthYearPicker
PopupMonthYearPicker
SpecialDates
QuickDateMenu
TimeOfDayTextBox
DurationTextBox
TimeTextBoxValidator
TimeTextBoxMinMaxValidator
TimeTextBoxCompareValidator
ContextMenu

All told, there are 20 controls, of which 7 are validators specially designed to validate the date and time controls. For this review, I’ll go over the installation and licensing experience first, then cover the capabilities of these controls, and wrap up with my overall recommendations. You may also want to read another review by Brian Desmond, completed in October 2003.

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User Comments

Title: Peter Berg
Name: Steven Smith
Date: 2005-10-14 3:47:58 PM
Comment:
Peter,
I won't delete your comment since I think it's good to have folks on both sides of the issues, but how can you possibly say these controls are not well documented? Did you not see the massively long document that came with the product which covered nearly every possible detail about the controls? I thought Peter Blum's docs were stellar - far better than many other control vendors - so you may have other legitimate gripes, but I don't think documentation can really be one of them.

Title: Over-rated
Name: Peter Berg
Date: 2005-10-14 3:27:50 PM
Comment:
I think these controls are overrated for the price. Additionally, it doesn't have any documentation. Perhaps Peter can spend some of his valuable time on documenting his crappy controls.

P.S. Plz don't come up with %$#@*% like this again.

Title: Peter Blum controls
Name: Brendon Muck
Date: 2005-04-29 3:40:54 PM
Comment:
We've been using Peter's Date Package for the past 2 years or so, and they are top notch. I've only had 1 problem, which Peter himself was quick to help me out with.

These controls are a bargain, even at twice their actual price!

Title: Must have
Name: Rick Gifford
Date: 2005-04-11 11:26:20 AM
Comment:
We have been using these controls for a year now in a production application and have been extremely happy with the tools, the documentation and the quality of the support.

Title: Peter Blum Date Contols
Name: Richard Cotter
Date: 2005-04-10 6:20:24 PM
Comment:
I struggled with Microsoft validation controls for validating date and time. From the very start after trialing and then buying Peter's Date Controls, I solved all my date and time problems. I like to use and recognize good quality design and development.

Title: Indispensable
Name: Peter Montgomery
Date: 2005-04-10 9:53:08 AM
Comment:
I can't rate these controls highly enough.

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