Best mechanism to have rich form controls on web page (HTML) equivalent to windows forms

Question

I am working towards porting a windows application to web. The windows application is quite rich w.r.t. the form controls, complex validations and user interactivity.

Basic web forms are inadequate to meet these complexities. So I would like to know the best way to still have the richness on the web pages. I have some ideas and would like comments.

1. Use DHTML & Java Script to mimic complex controls. There are some macro controls available as part of jQueryUI that can be used and some other third party Java Script controls. I'd like suggestions if there is a recommended control library.
2. Use RIA (preferably Silverlight) wherever rich controls are needed. I'd like to keep this as a last option because it mandates the Silverlight plug-in.

What are other popular / preferred strategies?

Answer 1

If you don't mind a departure from .NET "controls", I'd try Ext JS. It is dual licensed GPL/Commercial so you'll likely have to pay for it, but the components are more robust than Telerik or the other .NET versions.

Answer 2

There was an article on Codeproject which covered converting Winforms to ASP.NET

Hope this helps.

Answer 3

We have had a lot of success with the Telerik controls for ASP.NET.

http://www.telerik.com/products/aspnet-ajax.aspx

They also have a suite of Silverlight controls.

http://www.telerik.com/products/silverlight.aspx

And for ASP.NET MVC.

http://www.telerik.com/products/aspnet-mvc.aspx

They are very easy to use and richly featured. The demos on their site should give you a good feel for the capabilities.

Answer 4

I would suggest that you also check out the tools from DevExpress (http://www.devexpress.com). I've used both Telerik and DevExpress and ended up going with just the DevExpress tools. Both companies, however, are top-notch and both have tools that can really enhance your UI.

With that being said, I would strongly suggest that you avoid the temptation to just port your fat client UI to the Web. That is, if you are just looking for web controls to take the place of your current Windows controls but otherwise leave the UI intact, you are likely to be disappointed. The web is a different kind of animal and people expect to use it differently. With Ajax, JQuery and the various specialty tools from a company like DevExpress or Telerik you can do amazing things on the web that are the equal of anything you may have done in your current fat client interface but they will be done differently.

Reasons for this advice? First, in my experience Windows UIs migrated to the web feel clumsy and inappropriate. The controls aren't the only thing that changes - the entire windowing and content flow models are different.

Second, if you are deploying to organizations outside of your own, you are likely to find that there is significant resistance to using any kind of plug-in - including Silverlight. We win business all the time because we've stayed pure web.

Third, to the extent that you try to build web apps while not really learning web development ethics and methods, you'll just slow down your eventual evolution to true web development experts.

Anyway - that's my $0.02.