Property Pages

Admittedly, the Wizard is a cool way to configure the gauge controls. But for those of us who prefer the standard Windows interface, Dundas has exposed the properties of the gauge controls in the form of property pages. One advantage of using property pages is that the one line description for the selected property, provided at the bottom of the property page, is very helpful, especially when one is new to the control. This is one feature one would like to see added to the Wizard interface as well. Also, property pages cover all the properties that are exposed by the controls, as opposed to the Wizard which focuses on the more commonly used properties.

Tip: If you are like me and prefer to add and configure the gauges using the property pages rather than the Wizard, then you can stop the Wizard from showing up every time you drop a Gauge Container on the form by unchecking the Auto Run Wizard checkbox on the first page of the Wizard.

Samples

With such a large selection of controls, and literally scores of options to customize each one of them, it can be a bit difficult to explore the capabilities of each control. This is where the Gauge samples application is useful. This application has a folder tree window with folders for major areas of the application and nodes which contain more information on specific features and performing specific tasks. A working demo (with which the user can play around), a brief description, and code samples in both C# and VB.NET are provided for each topic. And with more than a hundred topics ranging over fifteen or so major areas, the samples give a comprehensive overview and helpful code snippets that enable a developer to get productive quickly.

In fact, I would recommend the samples as a good starting point for anyone new to the Dundas Gauge for .NET component.