10 Places You’ll Stop Rebuilding the Wheel

Intro: the hidden cost of DIY controls

WPF developers love control—sometimes too much. Rolling your own custom WPF controls looks cheaper at first, but the illusion fades once you maintain them across edge cases, frameworks, and accessibility requirements. A single missed keyboard shortcut or localization issue can burn sprint after sprint. Xceed’s WPF Toolkit Plus is a hardened control library that saves teams from constant reinvention, letting you focus on features instead of plumbing.

10 components you shouldn’t custom-build

1. PropertyGrid

Instead of scaffolding endless settings dialogs, PropertyGrid auto-generates editors from a POCO. Categories, attributes, and validation are baked in.

2. CollectionControl

Inline add/edit for lists without modal dialog churn. Stop coding “+ Add” popups for every entity.

3. BusyIndicator with async workflows

Built-in async feedback prevents duplicate submits. Don’t waste time wiring your own spinner logic around async/await.

4. NumericUpDown with culture/precision

Numeric spinners that respect cultures, precision, and keyboard entry. DIY versions rarely handle locale quirks well.

5. Masked inputs for compliance fields

SSNs, IBANs, MRNs, and postal codes validated at the keystroke level—no brittle regex-on-submit stacks.

6. DateTimePicker with keyboard-first UX

Users type dates and times quickly, while Min/Max and culture-aware parsing handle validation silently.

7. Themed navigation and inputs for accessibility

Accessible focus states, high-contrast modes, and ARIA-friendly patterns out of the box.

8. Wizard/stepper flows

Don’t rebuild multi-step navigation or state management. Wizard components handle it cleanly.

9. Watermark/validation patterns

Watermarks reduce label clutter. Validation surfaces inline, MVVM-friendly, no modal traps.

10. Data export helpers

Async, memory-efficient data export integrated with DataGrid pour WPF. Reinventing this usually means weeks of edge-case fixes.

Cost model: DIY vs Toolkit Plus

Let’s quantify the choice:

• DIY build + maintain:
  • Average control: ~80–120 hours initial build
  • Annual maintenance: ~20–40 hours (bugs, framework updates, accessibility audits)
  • 10 controls = ~1,000+ hours per year
• Toolkit Plus license:
  • One purchase, quarterly updates, direct support

Risk multipliers:

• Accessibility compliance can double maintenance cost.
• Localization multiplies test cases across cultures.
• Edge-case bugs: every sprint eats capacity.

Toolkit Plus pays for itself in the first sprint where you don’t have to reinvent one of these controls.

Team workflow gains

• Faster onboarding: new devs work with familiar controls, not custom ones with undocumented quirks.
• Consistent UX: one look and feel across squads instead of each team styling their own controls.
• Sprint velocity: engineers focus on business logic, not caret placement bugs.

Trust and support

When your DIY control fails in production, your dev team is the support team. With WPF Toolkit Plus, you get updates, bug fixes, and responsive help directly from the engineers who built it. That’s sprint capacity reclaimed.

Code snippet samples

Replace a DIY validation stack with MaskedTextBox

<xcad:MaskedTextBox
  Mask="000-00-0000"
  Value="{Binding SSN, UpdateSourceTrigger=PropertyChanged, ValidatesOnNotifyDataErrors=True}"
  Watermark="SSN" />

Integrate BusyIndicator around async save

<xcad:BusyIndicator IsBusy="{Binding IsSaving}" BusyContent="Saving...">
  <Button Content="Save" Command="{Binding SaveCommand}" />
</xcad:BusyIndicator>

public async Task SaveAsync()
{
  IsSaving = true;
  try { await _service.SaveAsync(Model); }
  finally { IsSaving = false; }
}

CTA

• Stop maintaining DIY controls—start a free trial of Toolkit Plus and ship features faster.
• Have migration questions? Contact support.