[DUG]: My gripe for the week - 3rd party components

[Dave . Jollie]

Hi all   3rd party Components are great - they save a heap of work writing something from scratch (no need to re-invent the wheel). And usually the writers of the components are fairly helpful when it comes to queries.   My gripe is that often these components don't come with much help. I end up spending a lot of time trying various properties on the Object Inspector, trying to get the effect I want.  Instead of spending my time programming (which I enjoy), I can end up spending hours being a "tweaker of properties" on a component which has little instructions!   Mostly components don't come with any electronic manual, only help. Usually the help gives a hint, but doesn't quite give me the scenario I'm looking at. I end up needing to contact the writer and plead for help.   Sometimes it comes down to a bug in the component, which I have to fix or do a work-around for.   Oh well, that's life - but it sure annoys the hell out of me when I have buggy or undocumented components, and have to become a "tweaker of component properties" (a lot of guess work) versus writing some real code.   Dave Jollie Tower NZ IT 09 368 4259