Office 2007 Style UI Ribbons: DevExpress or TMS?

Question

Who provides the better solution for this particular component?

Answer 1

We have been using both. As I see it, each solution has it's pro and contra.

DevExpress

1. Responsive (as in fast) components.
2. Adheres to the Microsoft standard.
3. Clean code.
4. Very good support
5. Expensive.

TMS

1. Not as snappy (as in fast) as DevExpress.
2. Looking at the code, cleaning-up things wouldn't hurt.
3. Very good support.
4. Inexpensive.

In a nutshell, TMS is always very fast in releasing new components (they had a Ribbon months before DevExpress released theirs) but in my opinion at the expense of code quality.
We always have been pleased with both packages. For our latest projects, we are switching to DevExpress though.

Answer 2

I use DevExpress to great effect - good support, good themes, works well.

Answer 3

You didn't wrote something about your delphi version.

In delphi 2009 are ribbons controls integrated. perhaps you should upgrade to d2009 to take also advantage of the generics and the other new language features.

but the integrated ribbons are not powerful as the tms/devExpress components.

at DevExpress you have a 60 Day money back guarantee.

tms is much cheaper.

Answer 4

We're using the TMS components.

At the time we were looking (and I haven't checked DevExpress recently), they were the only one who supported ribbon groups (adding extra ribbon pages with a title that goes up into the title bar).

Answer 5

I'm also a happy user of the DevExpress version. Their support is excelent, I would recommend them. But I have no experience with TMS. Their product and support might be as good or even better :-)

Answer 6

Devexpress components are very intrusive, and make your .exe bigger than TMS does. Also, Devexpress are more complicated to use than TMS.

So I think that I would choose TMS without any doubt.