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# Better ListView: Alternative list view control for .NET

Ideal .NET WinForms (C#, VB.net) replacement list view component. More features, less limitations, fast and optimized.

- Overview
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- Story

- Better ListView is a list view control for .NET Windows Forms
- Designed as a replacement for the regular .NET list view control.
- Compatible with: Visual Studio 2015, 2013, 2012, 2010, 2008, 2005, with full designer support.
- For C#, Visual Basic .NET (VB.NET), managed C++, and other CLI languages.
- Compatible with .NET 4.5, .NET 4, .NET 3.5, .NET 3, .NET 2, and newer. Supports .NET Client Profile.
- Runs on Windows 10, 8, 7, Vista, 2003, XP, 2000, and newer, both 32-bit and 64-bit.
- Better ListView has more features and flexibility, always uses the current system theme (including Aero support), and removes limitations of the regular .NET list view control.
- Minimum learning needed. Better ListView can be used just like the regular list view.
- Written in pure managed C# code. It is fast, light-weight and optimized for 10k+ items.
- Easy royalty-free deployment. Single DLL file that has just 250kB when compressed.
- The assembly is FIPS-compliant, CLS-compliant, digitally signed and strongly named.
- Tested in the real world by thousands of users

## Extra features summary

Better ListView is fast and flicker-free, supports hierarchical items, has improved grouping, better drag & drop and item reordering support, better column headers, inbuilt sorting, multi-column sorting, better images support, context menus for column headers and items, embedded controls for editing support, automatic and custom sizing of items and images, thumbnails view, richer event data, item text formatting, XML and binary serialization, data-binding, owner-drawing options, better tooltips, powerful hit-test, improved usability, easy saving/loading of contents into file or string, multi-line items, and more.

> Component Owl created the one and only tool I don’t want to be without when it comes to software developing in Visual Studio. Also, I’ve been working as software user/developer for the last 26 years, and I have never before experienced a support that really goes the needed extra mile to make things work, like the guys at Component Owl do.

Göran Alfvén, Sweden

> The control is very easy and intuitive to use and is well documented.

DevProConnections.com Review

> Better List View is awesome.

Daniel N

### Hierarchical items

You can create tree-like structures in Better ListView; inbuilt drag & drop hierarchical reordering of items.

### Improved grouping

Better grouping – customizable group headers look and behavior, collapsible, image support, context menu support, focusable, etc. Each group header can be customized individually.

### Save/load contents with 1 line of code

You can save or load the contents of Better ListView in just 1 line of code, either to file or string. Both XML and binary serialization is supported.

### Double-buffered and flicker free

Simply put, Better ListView is smooth. Regular listview requires multiple anti-flicker techniques, but you do not have to worry about that with Better ListView. Better ListView is optimized for 100k+ items.

### Column header images

You can use images in column headers. Custom image sizes are supported.

### Sub-item images

You can set images to list view sub-items. Regular list view allows you to set only one image per list view item, but Better ListView can show image for every sub-item (in every column).

### Image-List and Image Support

Better ListView supports both image list, or individual image objects (System.Drawing.Image). Regular list view forces you to use ImageList object.

### Custom list view Image size

You can use any image size in the list view. Better ListView can also automatically resize images with preserving aspect ratio.

### Drag & drop with insertion mark

Highly customizable drag-drop for both internal and external drag-drop. You can use drop highlight or insertion mark drag drop modes.

### List view item reordering

Better ListView has inbuilt item reordering and item drag & drop inserting at the position specified by user. Drag & drop preview is shown using an insertion mark.

### Column-header reordering

Better ListView has inbuilt easy drag & drop column header reordering that is much easier to use than in the regular list view. Insertion mark is shown, auto-scrolling is supported.

### Auto-scroll for column header reordering and item reordering

Better ListView has inbuilt auto-scrolling for column header and item reordering.

### Column headers can be shown in all views

Better ListView can display column headers in all views - Details, SmallIcons, LargeIcons, List, Tile, Thumbnails. This allows users to sort items in all views. Additionally, you can also hide the column headers even in the details view.

### Thumbnails view mode

Better ListView supports additional "thumbnails" view mode that allows you to view images of large sizes. The images are automatically and smoothly resized with preserved aspect ratio. You can define the maximum/minimum desired image sizes.

### Image shadows, borders and padding

All images in Better ListView can have border or shadow specified. You can also specify padding that gives you space for owner drawing (eg. overlay images). This can be used in all views. Image shadows like in Windows 7 theme are supported. Windows Explorer uses very similar shadows for image thumbnails.

### Multi-column sorting

You can sort by multiple columns in Better ListView. Simply shift+click a secondary (or third, etc) column to add it to the current sort. Zero code needed. Additionally, the background of the primary (first) sort column can be highlighted.

### Inbuilt sorting and natural sorting

Better ListView has inbuilt list view sorting that works out of the box. You no longer need to implement your own item comparer. If custom comparer is needed, you can inherit from the Better ListView comparer to save time.

### Richer event data

Many events have richer event data that allow you to do extra operations or tell you extra useful information. The richer events include: AfterItemSort, BeforeDrag, BeforeItemSort, ColumnClick (allows you to cancel sort), DragDropException, DrawBackground, DrawColumnHeaderBackground, DrawColumnHeader, DrawItemBackground, DrawItem, HitTestChanged, ItemActivate (event data tells you how the item got activated - mouse, keyboard or code), ItemDrag, ItemDrop, ItemReorder, ItemSearch, LabelEdit, RequestEmebeddedControl.

### Checkboxes in all views

You can have checkboxes in LargeIcons view, SmallIcons view, List view, Thumbnails view and of course also in the Details view.

### Three state checkboxes

Three state checkboxes are supported in Better ListView:

### Hide or show checkboxes of specific ListView Items

You can hide checkbox for any ListViewItem. You can also show checkboxes only for specified items. All list items in Better ListView have "AllowShowCheckBox" property.

### Powerful list view tooltips

You can display tooltips for nearly any part of Better ListView - tooltips for items, sub-items, checkboxes, item images, sub-item images, column headers, column header images, column header borders, and even for custom areas (regions). Owner-drawn tooltips are supported.

### Uses current Windows theme

Instead of implementing custom, un-native look and feel, Better ListView always automatically fully uses the current system theme. It supports Aero as well. Better ListView always looks great and feels right to the user.

### XML and binary serialization of everything

Every part of Better ListView (items, sub-items, column headers) can be both binary and XML serialized. You can easily XML serialize whole list view (or binary serialize) to save it to file or transfer items between controls. Standard ways of .NET serialization can be used (BinaryFormatter, XmlSerializer).

### Owner drawing

Better ListView allows you to draw over the client area, items and column headers. Contrary to .NET ListView, owner drawing is fully operational even when the system uses Aero theme. You can draw separately to background and foreground parts of Better ListView without worrying about proper drawing order. Owner drawing events provide rich data, including exact item state and areas of every item part.

### Multi-line items

Better ListView supports multi-line items. Items with very long text can be displayed on multiple lines. Highly customizable and powerful: Focused items can have custom number of lines; hard line breaks supported as well. Foreground overlay "watermark" images are easily achievable using owner-drawing.

### Background image support

Display background image in Better ListView easily using the BackgroundImage property. Many layouts (stretch, tile, none), alignments (top, bottom, left, right, center and combinations) are supported, as well as customizable opacity.

### Context menu for column headers, list items, and empty area

Better ListView supports 3 types of context menus: Column header context menu, list view items context menu, and empty area context menu (when right-clicking white space).

### Advanced hit-test with detailed information

The hit test in Better ListView returns very detailed information. It tells you not only the location (Client Area, Sub-Item, Sub-Item Text, Sub-Item Image, Checkbox, Column Header Image, and many more), but it also tells you the state of the item, and part of the item (left or right).

### Customizable search-by-typing

Better ListView has excellent customization functionality for find-as-you-type item searching. The search modes include: Prefix (searchs from beginning of items), Substring (search any part of item text), Prefix + Substring, or Disabled. Additionally, search options include: Case sensitive, search first word only, play sound when item not found, prefer prefixes, search whole words. You can also restrict the search to only certain columns. You can also call "FindItemsWithText" function to find items from code.

### Display text when the list view is empty

You can display a gray text centered in the list view if it's empty to hint or educate users. This will make your software more user friendly.

### Embed controls for item editing

Inbuilt in-line editing support includes label edit, combobox edit, date picker edit. You can also embed any custom control for in-line editing. Sub-item editing is supported. Highly customizable.

### ListView item text formatting

Supports both text trimming and auto-ellipsis for text that's too long. You can choose from: TrimCharacter, TrimWord, EllipsisCharacter, EllipsisWord, EllipsisPath (for file paths). Column header text can be broken into multiple lines.

### Focusable ListView sub-items and groups

Focus sub-items or groups in Better ListView easily with keyboard. Just use the arrow keys. (This is impossible with the regular .NET ListView)

### Automatic list view layout

Better ListView can auto-size item images, item text, column header images, column header text.

### Custom list view item size

You can set custom sizes for item text area and item images. You can also set custom size for column header text area and column header images. (Text area size is different from font size, text area size basically defines the size of the list view item.) This enables you to make tiny/huge column headers or list view items.

> It's an odd thing when you're inspired by a form component, but Component Owl with their Better ListView has done it. Love its native feel.

Daniel N, USA

## More advantages of our improved list view component:

- Developer friendly: All classes and properties are as similar to the regular list view as possible. Everything is intuitive, very little learning is needed. You can use Better ListView immediately. Save time and ship sooner.
- Better ListView has improved usability and fixed behavior. All Windows users are familiar with the list view used in Windows Explorer. Better ListView mimicks behavior and look & feel of the Windows Explorer list view as much as possible to leverage the existing user knowledge. Using Better ListView is pleasant for users. Many other list view components implement custom look and behavior and can oftentimes downright frustrate users (many controls don't even support mouse-wheel scrolling!) This doesn't happen with Better ListView.
- Guaranteed support and continued development: Better ListView is developed as a joint-venture of two software companies that use Better ListView in their main products (popular Swift To-Do List and ImagingShop). These applications are used by thousands of users daily. This is your guarantee that Better ListView will be supported and developed in the future.
- Tested in real world applications by thousands of users: Because Better ListView is used in professional consumer desktop software applications - Swift To-Do List and ImagingShop, thousands of users work with Better ListView every day. Although we use unit tests that cover most of code, and do thorough inhouse testing, this is your true guarantee that it is tested thoroughly in the real world. It is extremely stable.
- Better ListView does not inherit from the regular .NET list view. It is written in pure managed C# code and is flexible, light weight, and fast. Extensions of the regular .net list view only go so far. Better ListView goes further. Soure code licenses are also available for ultimate customization.

> In addition to creating a new List View control to incorporate broader flexibility and functionality, Better ListView could also be called Fixed ListView, as it corrects a number of annoying problems with the standard List View that Microsoft delivers to Visual Studio customers.

DevProConnections.com Review
Download Free Trial - With sample projects See Pricing & Licensing

Version 3.15 / May 27, 2015

Seamless integration with .NET 2.0 and higher

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### Latest From Our Blog

#### Activation issues and how to solve them

Wednesday, 01 March 2017

#### The Three Main Advantages Better ListView has Over the Classic .NET Framework

Thursday, 09 February 2017

#### BLV and Internet Explorer

Sunday, 13 November 2016

#### Centering Images in Better ListView Sub-items

Wednesday, 06 August 2014

#### Sub-item Check Boxes in Better ListView

Sunday, 06 July 2014
See more posts »

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27May

#### Better ListView Express 3.15 released!

Download latest release

27May

#### Better ListView 3.15 released!

Download latest release

27May

#### Better SplitButton 3.15 released!

Download latest release

27May

#### Better Thumbnail Browser 3.15 released!

Download latest release

08Apr

#### Better ListView Express 3.14.0 released!

See what's new or Download latest release

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