Suggestion: Create a Gauge designer or some predefined gauge templates.

[David Sandor]

The WPF and Silverlight Gauges are pretty in the demos but I must say they are a real pain to get started with.  I have been using various gauge products in my applications for years and I think yours look great and operate great but to use them in your code really is a pain.

With great customizability comes great pain.  

I think you would do your clients a big favor if you provided a Gauge designer.  So that I can via a UI build out the XAML required for my Gauge.  Start out with a high level Linear, Radial..etc and allow me to tweak some (not all) of the properties to make it into a gauge that I want in my application.  Then allow me to cut and past the Gauge XAML into my code or do the paste for me.  I think that would make your tools a million times better.

Another comment, somewhat related.  Your demos have source code behind them so it is possible for a developer to take some of the code modeled in your demo and use it in their app.  However your demo's use custom classes (whilst the code is written very well) it obfuscates what is happening.  Because of this and your extremely limited documentation for WPF/Silverlight there is a great barrier to using your products.  Wizards like the one I explained would help out a lot.  Clearer documentation would also help greatly.  An example of a shortfall in your documentation is this:  I want to databind to a RadGridView but do not want to use AutoCreateColumns.  You have no documentation on it.  To me, AutoCreateColumns is not a real world feature but Custom Columns are.. there is documentation on the prior but not on the latter.  One more note on WPF documentation.  Create basic examples instead of massively complex examples.  For example, do not use Control Templates and Styles in your basic examples (unless you are giving an example of such).  This only confuses a WPF/XAML newbie and can turn them off of using your product.  Maybe in a year it will make sense to elevate past some of the XAML/WPF basics but at this stage of the game I think it is good to show straightforward examples and add on to them in more advanced examples.

Anyway, I have been a Telerik customer for many years (across many of my clients) and I love your products.  I just wanted to provide you some feedback in these areas that I consider deficiencies.

Thanks,

David Sandor

[Hristo]

Hi David,

Thank you for your feedback and for your suggestions. The idea for a gauge designer sounds very reasonable and I'm sure it will be very helpful for all users who use our Gauge control. Since we are in the middle of our planning for our next release (Q3) we'll discuss the possibilities for introducing such improvement.

As for our documentation and examples - I should admit that there are a lot of things to be reworked or included. Improving documentation, adding new examples and etc. is a constant effort for all SL and WPF development teams. Unfortunately for the time being the development of our controls is ahead of our documentation.

Thanks again for your feedback and for your suggestions! We count on such opinions in order to keep the best possible offer for our clients. I have updated your Telerik points. 

Kind regards,
Hristo
Unit Manager
the Telerik team

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[Daniel Sprague]

Hi Telerik,

I absolutely second David's idea.

I'm currently using version 2010.2.812.40 (Q2 2010 SP1), and David's concerns ares still valid.

Here's a perfect current example:
Right now I'm trying to use a RadGuage in my WPF app.  All I want to do is use the guage to display a value between 0 and 100, and change the radial guage display to quarter/quadrant.  (I'm not even going to attempt to change colors, or the needle shape, I'll just go with the defaults).
I would think that changing the layout from complete circle to quadrant or half circle would be such a common and beneficial task that a couple simple properties should exist at the root level of the guage control, called something like "guage circle size" and "guage orientation".  The "guage circle size" should be able to be set to either "full", "half", or "quadrant",  
However, obviously that doesn't exist, so to use the same functionality, apparently a theme needs to be applied.

Like David mentioned, your demos/examples are very slick and professional.  Obviously, you guys have provided many examples, each using a very wide array of customizations.  Clicking the "View Code" tab is very useful, but, since the current example is contained within this huge example/demo solution, which consists of many projects, the code that does appear seems to be only part of the picture.

And as far as the documentation, it seems very limited (not in amount of, but in usability), and to really get something out of it, a lot of other knowledge must first be obtained. 

In summary, the guage designer sounds awesome.  And please consider implementing more "stand-alone" demos/examples of the controls, as opposed to all inclusive applications.


Sincerely,
Daniel Sprague

[Giuseppe]

Hi Daniel,

Thank you for your feedback.

Indeed your reasoning makes perfect sense and we will consider implementing something along these lines (easier set-up of semi-circle/quadrant gauges, bullet graphs, etc.) for one of the future releases of the control as unfortunately the priority of this task was lowered in 2009 due to some critical tasks across the data visualization suite of controls that required our immediate attention.


All the best,
Freddie
the Telerik team