This is mixed review -
Past few months, ProfGrid has gone downhill. Their newsgroup support went missing and eventually, very few updates.
For updates, this requires some explanation:
the price is US$149.95 for license per developer and US$99.95 per 2nd (3rd, 4th, 5th) year onwards.
There are two licenses, Source and without source code. The source code version is the one should you get (more on that later), so that will set you back at least US$490 (and US$199 for maintenance after 1st year) for a site license.
How does ProfGrid HTML component fair?
ProfGrid has two components, the older DHTML wrapper library and newer IE-Editor library. The older DHTML library is depreciated and ProfGrid recommends you to use latest ProfHTMLEdit library. For text formatting, it works, but style support is very poor.
Let me explain what problem is. The older DHTML control preserved HTML to modest extent and newer HTML control does not preserve HTML codes. so for example, you try "editing" a nice HTML template, it gets messed-up after that using ProfGrid's newer component wrapper. No amount of work will get it fixed unless you move back to older DHTML wrapper.
- Next, multi-level undo and redo is supported to what IE allows, no more, no less. Elements may be moved around, but limited t what IE can do. Search is very restricted, and Bsalsa's IE search implementation is more robust. (see 2nd part). Hyperlinking don't give you all details. It gives you basic vanilla IE screen.
- FileManagement is limited to ANSI text. In delphi 2009, the vendor "kludges" this by converting text to ANSI and back (but nobody to hear screams because there is no place to complain about it).
- CSS support is limited to basics. It don't expose all of IE's support model.
- Context menu is basically TPopupMenu handler. not much actually...
- Dialog boxes calls TSaveDialog and TOpenDialog in code. you have to buy the sources to modify those (like adding *.aspx, *.html, *.php to the dialog box filter)
- Spell Check does not work as claimed. It does work very slowly.
- Access to DHTML model is not actually true. Many code parts are marked "private" and unless you buy sources, there is no way to access them.
Your reviewer DelphiHater used it for while and used another from http://www.bsalsa.com/ instead.
The reasons were:
- The HTML component (since both bsalsa and ProfGrid are IE wrappers) is more complete in Bsalsa than in Profgrid's.
- Bsalsa supports Delphi 2009 correctly, while, I don't know, not much updates for ProfGrid. Also, since I have to pay US$99.95 a year for updates, I might as well use the free Bsalsa version.
- If my buddy wants to review the code, I would have to pay money for licenses. since using Bsalsa, it has been much better.
- Bsalsa has more complete wrapper. such as, better support for add-on things, like history lists, Favorites, IE Cache and wrappers.
Conclusion
I wish ProfGrid would update their site more often with more "usable" tutorials, more "usable" help files, more robust code and put back their newsgroups.
March 2013
Article update - see Website obituary - ProfGrid.com
See article corrections - Article corrections
Past few months, ProfGrid has gone downhill. Their newsgroup support went missing and eventually, very few updates.
For updates, this requires some explanation:
the price is US$149.95 for license per developer and US$99.95 per 2nd (3rd, 4th, 5th) year onwards.
There are two licenses, Source and without source code. The source code version is the one should you get (more on that later), so that will set you back at least US$490 (and US$199 for maintenance after 1st year) for a site license.
How does ProfGrid HTML component fair?
ProfGrid has two components, the older DHTML wrapper library and newer IE-Editor library. The older DHTML library is depreciated and ProfGrid recommends you to use latest ProfHTMLEdit library. For text formatting, it works, but style support is very poor.
Let me explain what problem is. The older DHTML control preserved HTML to modest extent and newer HTML control does not preserve HTML codes. so for example, you try "editing" a nice HTML template, it gets messed-up after that using ProfGrid's newer component wrapper. No amount of work will get it fixed unless you move back to older DHTML wrapper.
- Next, multi-level undo and redo is supported to what IE allows, no more, no less. Elements may be moved around, but limited t what IE can do. Search is very restricted, and Bsalsa's IE search implementation is more robust. (see 2nd part). Hyperlinking don't give you all details. It gives you basic vanilla IE screen.
- FileManagement is limited to ANSI text. In delphi 2009, the vendor "kludges" this by converting text to ANSI and back (but nobody to hear screams because there is no place to complain about it).
- CSS support is limited to basics. It don't expose all of IE's support model.
- Context menu is basically TPopupMenu handler. not much actually...
- Dialog boxes calls TSaveDialog and TOpenDialog in code. you have to buy the sources to modify those (like adding *.aspx, *.html, *.php to the dialog box filter)
- Spell Check does not work as claimed. It does work very slowly.
- Access to DHTML model is not actually true. Many code parts are marked "private" and unless you buy sources, there is no way to access them.
Your reviewer DelphiHater used it for while and used another from http://www.bsalsa.com/ instead.
The reasons were:
- The HTML component (since both bsalsa and ProfGrid are IE wrappers) is more complete in Bsalsa than in Profgrid's.
- Bsalsa supports Delphi 2009 correctly, while, I don't know, not much updates for ProfGrid. Also, since I have to pay US$99.95 a year for updates, I might as well use the free Bsalsa version.
- If my buddy wants to review the code, I would have to pay money for licenses. since using Bsalsa, it has been much better.
- Bsalsa has more complete wrapper. such as, better support for add-on things, like history lists, Favorites, IE Cache and wrappers.
Conclusion
I wish ProfGrid would update their site more often with more "usable" tutorials, more "usable" help files, more robust code and put back their newsgroups.
March 2013
Article update - see Website obituary - ProfGrid.com
See article corrections - Article corrections
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