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I'm looking for a Docking library for using in the C# application. It can be designed for WPF, but I prefer WinForms applications. Of course, it should provide standart docking opportunities.
I'm going to use it in an application where user can control a huge amount of different processes which can appear and disappear dynamically during the application lifetime. Thus, the main criteria is the following: I should have opportunity to create docking windows and controls located on it dynamically and save the information about all docking windows positions in some file (content I can save using other way). After the application was relaunched it should restore all the docking windows in their states before the application close (and all of their content, but I can load it manually).
Unfortunately, I have found the only docking components library that contains all the required features - it's Telerik WinControls. But it's too slow for my purposes.

Please advise me a good docking library!

alexeykuzmin0
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  • I bet this will be closed soon,hahaha. There are always some admin, who hate such posts. – David Apr 17 '13 at 14:13
  • @David, there are no admins on SO. – Shoe Apr 17 '13 at 14:34
  • @Jueecy.new There certainly are admins on SO, they just don't spend their time closing posts. Regular users (and occasionally mods) handle the closing of posts, leaving the admins to handle other types of problems. – Servy Apr 17 '13 at 14:43
  • @Servy, never heard of any. Can you name one? – Shoe Apr 17 '13 at 14:44
  • @Jueecy.new Well, "admins" wouldn't be the traditional name. There are mods, which is anyone with a diamond after their name [example](http://stackoverflow.com/users/106224/boltclock). Then there are employees of SE that are above them [example](http://stackoverflow.com/users/811/shog9). It seems beyond the scope of the comment here to discuss the hierarchy among SE employees. – Servy Apr 17 '13 at 14:49
  • @user1989995 - There are several docking librarys on the market. Which ones have you tried? If the only library you found that meets all your requirements what makes you think we know of any? – Security Hound Apr 17 '13 at 15:28

2 Answers2

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AvalonDock

It provides binding mechanisms for easy manipulation and MVVM and good serialization mechanics. It is the docking library used in SharpDevelop. Plus its free.

MrDosu
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  • Another benefit is that the sourcecode is publicly available. While the library is production ready I have branched the code in my current project to add functionality that i needed. It is always good to have the option. – MrDosu Apr 17 '13 at 14:34
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Actipro makes one

Actipro Docking Library

I have used the WPF version (not WinForms) of their docking library and it is pretty good. I'm not sure why you said the Telerik docking library was too slow.

Alan
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  • When I used it, I faced with the following problem: each refresh of a form (including all the required docking windows and its content, based on ZedGraph graphs and different Telerik RadControls) wasted about 0.5 seconds on a 12-cored Core i7 server. – alexeykuzmin0 Apr 17 '13 at 14:21
  • @user1989995 if it was helpful please upvote, if it was answer please click the checkmark on left to mark as answer. Welcome to StackOverflow! you may want to read the FAQ etc.. – Alan Apr 17 '13 at 15:26
  • I have tried some tests on these libraries but I'm not sure in my choice at the moment. – alexeykuzmin0 Apr 17 '13 at 16:09