ActiveBar - Reviews

Overview | Pricing & Licensing | Evals & Downloads | Compatibility | Publisher Details | Reviews | Support Forum | Summary

Customer Reviews

Average Review:   based on 7 reviews.

antaresequity [USA] 15-Aug-2002Review: 

Two Thumbs UP!

Little early to really give it 5 stars but it does exactley what I wanted it to do....

I can take my SAX SmartUI components, imbed them in a Data Daynamics ActiveBar, and drag them willy nilly across the screen.

My events panel docks flawlessly on the bottom as well.

For less than 200 bucks I have full dock/float toolbars that take other Active-X controls as childs....on top of that the ActiveBar suite doesnt look to shabby in its own right....pretty sweet....But I Strongly Suggest SAX SmartUI as an excellent partner tool....With these two tools, you can create property windows identical to XP and VS, have them dock look totally PRO

I think that the Active Bar, and the SAX SmartUI are one two knock out punch for modern looking applications.

Another Two Thumbs Up for Component Source on a smooth and flawless transaction.

Scott

emil [Australia] 03-Aug-2001Review: 

Excellent product. Very reliable and relatively easy to use.

sdurcos [France] 11-Jul-2001Review: 

Tough work to rate this component. Whereas functionality seems to be quite wide-ranged and API rather easy-to-use, integration and inter-operability are very poor. It is supposed not to be language-dependant and compatible with stuff like Visual C++ or Borland C++ or whatever. That's only theory. Actually, ActiveBar may only be used with Visual Basic (and works well) as it's design for it: most documentation refers to VB interface and technology...
Documentation is totally absent from the entire web, newsgroups only deal with Visual Basic, and Data Dynamics itself warns you: C++ ActiveBar on-line support won't be assumed. When you buy such a component, you want a whole package including support, documentation, etc. The only way you want to use the component is to browse the .ocx generated interface in your environment.
At last, look at the following (from DataDynamics Knowledge Base for ActiveBar 2.0) :
---------------------
Article ID: 1433
Title: The languages Activebar 2.0 does not support....
Summary: The languages Activebar 2.0 does not support....
[...]
Activebar 2.0 WAS DESIGN to function best in a Visual Basic environment.
Activebar 2.0 MAY work in the following environments, however Data Dynamics DOES NOT provide support for them.

The following environments are not supported by the Activebar 2.0 Support staff:
-FoxPro
-PowerBuilder
-IE/HTML *** There are a few articles in this Knowledgebase on this topic.***
-Visual J++
-VB 7.0 *** We are in the process of creating Activebar.Net for this environment.***
-Access
-Oracle
-C++ *** There are a few samples included with Activebar made in this environment.***
-Appearance in GI of anything but Microsoft 2000
***Refer to Newsgroups for help or information by other developers and customers who have tried these environments***
---------------------

For example, there is only ONE buggier ActiveBar 2.0 sample. Actually it seems to be ActiveBar 1 sample non-operable with 2.0 release (sic.)

Anonymous 13-Jun-2001Review: 

Version 1 was a much better product.

They've tried to cram too many features into version 2.0, and have sacrificed the ease of use, elegance, and simplicity of version 1. In version 1, you only had toolbars. But they were very clean, fast, solid and mostly bug-free.

The "docking forms" feature of version 2.0 seems like a complete re-hash, and results in a sloppy, unusable user-interface. Not to mention that you have to write a ton of additional code just to get your own windows to integrate with ActiveBar.

I was extremely impressed with version 1, and to this day it is still one of the best ActiveX controls I have ever purchased. I hope they still sell that version as it is well worth its price.

Anonymous 21-Feb-2001Review: 

This is well worth buying, if you want to create easy to use snap off type toolbars. It is easy to use, with set up of the page being done from a very intuitive design tool, which is essentially an enhanced properties page. The ability to place forms into toolbars and basically create "web style tables" is wonderful. The documentation is good, but could do with more detail and better-written tutorials, but as the product is easy to pick up, this is forgivable. I tried the user support once and got a very quick response, so no problems there. Two great features are the toolbar capture, which captures another toolbars images and functions, the second is the bitmap image editor, which whilst not a new idea the facility to edit the bitmaps you are placing on buttons, within the properties page is great.

It comes with a range of buttons and drop downs etc that should cover most applications and also saves it's state so that users can restart their software in the same state they closed it. Basically it will give your applications the same look and feel as MS office applications.

I tried many "Outlook" style form set up components, but this one gives the best and most flexible results.

Steve.Long [WA, USA] 21-Feb-2001Review: 

I bought this product because of the great experience I've had with another Data Dynamics product, "Active Reports." I've been using ActiveBar for several months now and have come to the realization that the product is moderately infested with bugs. I'm not saying the product is useless. It's not. It's a very nice product that enables the docking of forms to toolbars (a very nice feature). However, you are also supposed to be able to dock activeX controls to toolbars, but this is very buggy to say the least. Additionally, there are other bugs in trying to save the toolbar and menubar user settings (these are supposed to be fixed though). All in all, it is a good product that enables you to produce professional looking applications resembling Office 2000 products. If they would only iron out the bugs.

kbarlar [MO, USA] 15-Feb-2001Review: 

This control has some very neat features but overall it is a poorly developed control. A good portion of the properties do not work as documented in the help file. Icons disappear from the toolbar buttons randomly, resize feature does not work as specified. This is a great tool if you have the time to get it setup initially.