To renew or not

It's renewal time next month and in a tough economic situation it's more than ever important to know what you get for your money.

Looking at the release notes what major and interesting features have been added since April 28, 2008, there is not a lot:

Added CXTPEdit, CXTPComboBox, CXTPSpinButtonCtrl, CXTPProgressCtrl, CXTPScrollBar with set of themes
Added GDI+ support for Markup Shapes
Added Black and Silver Office2007 Skins

For others there might have been one or the other nice addition.

Also with Qt 4.5 now being available under the LGPL for free now, there is an other player in this field now.

My feeling is that the development at Codejock is slowing down for the MFC components.

So which major features can we expect this year?

artsd wrote: the ... maintenance cost of Toolkit Pro is ... reasonable

Yes, it is, but only if you get something useful for it. Otherwise the money is better spent on a WinForms/WPF toolkit.
And I don't think that I'm asking too much if I wanted to know what major features are planned this year.

artsd wrote: For brand new development, we use .NET WinForms, WPF, or Silverlight.

Codejock also lacks WinForms and WPF controls and it doesn't seem like there is anything in the pipe. I hoped that Codejock would provide a smooth path for integrating WPF controls, maybe declarative UI (XAML) where than different implementations (MFC, WinForms, WPF) could be used with the same XAML file.

znakeeye wrote: A couple of charting controls, and I'd bet all of us would be satisfied for a year or so :P

terrym wrote: An official response would be nice :) as I am intrigued to know the future of XTP and whats coming.

We would have to renew in 30 days, but Codejock is way too intransparent about upcoming features and release dates.
They are asking for $319 without even giving a hint what you'll get for it. I also don't like that they give a new major version number to a bug fixing release (13.0). I really would like to see a grid and chart control, but why should I give $319 to them not even knowing if they will be added within the next month if I can also buy a WinForms chart control right now?

Anybody got any answers yet :( on as to when we can expect newer builds.  I dont mind paying yearly subscriptions, but I have not had a response as to any future updates as discussed in this thread.

Our next major release is scheduled for middle of this summer. The reason we do not like to give too many details before a release is because the competition is tough in this market space, and we do not want to tip our hand too much. However we have many new features that will be incorporated including some of the requests you are asking for. I think the quality of our product speaks volumes for itself, you can go elsewhere, but you may not like what you find.

Economically it makes sense to keep your subscription active, rather then letting it expire because the cost is much less to renew a subscription compared to purchasing a new one to get new features. The decision is yours however the cost is very reasonable and we do work hard to incorporate many of your requests with each new release. Another thing to keep in mind is the cost not only covers new features, but support as well.

Hope this helps.

It made me happy to hear that nice improvements are coming in the summer of 2009. It is okay that that you need to keep your product strategy a secret, but dropping little supportive comments like what was said here, encourages everyone. We all like to know that CXTP is being developed continually. Sometimes I fear that -- like many other component developers -- Codejock may move only to pure DotNet components, so it always lifts my heart to hear about the aggressive development going on with CXTP.

Support wrote: Our next major release is scheduled for middle of this summer. The reason we do not like to give too many details before a release is because the competition is tough in this market space, and we do not want to tip our hand too much. However we have many new features that will be incorporated including some of the requests you are asking for.