Designing options / settings in .NET.
I have an app with about 35 ~ different settings in different categories.
What are the best techniques to expose this to a client.
Second, are there any VS.NET add-ons or libraries (commercial or not) that can help speed this process up. Something like "Property Grid" maybe, but in a more professional and user-friendly way.
All customizations based on class and subclass pairs.
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Have you looked at the design implemented by Visual Studio itself, which is a tree view for categories and a panel that updates as each category is selected?
I haven't been able to find examples in the Code Project (I may have been looking for the wrong terms), but I found this tutorial where you go through three different visualizations. This dates back to 2004, so there are probably newer pages, but this would be a good starting point.
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For only 35 options, I think the standard tabbed dialog will work fine. It's a familiar interface that even novice users can understand.
However, for applications with many parameters, this type of interface starts to degrade. You get too many tabs or too much clutter on each tab. The Options screen in Word 2007 is slightly better for more options. It is essentially a tabbed interface, but the tabs are on the left, not the top, and the area on the right is scrolled. You want to be careful to put the most important options "above the fold" so they don't get lost. Also, having a "popular" tab is a good idea.
If you expect the number of options to grow, you may want to consider the Office 2007 Style Options screen.
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