How good can Winforms make a UI look using free resources only?

Question

I\'m a novice programmer writing my first program (it\'s in C#), and having to learn as I go. I\'d love to have a WPF gui but that might be biting off more than I can chew

Answer 1

I guess when you talk about "UIs done in WinForms" you mean UI or widgets framework?

Free:

OpenTheme: A free basic theme library.

Dock Panel Suite: Similar to the panel system in Visual Studio 2003.

RCM: Another free skin library.

XPTable: An extended list view.

And you can find a lot of custom controls in a place like CodeProject.

But, if you are willing to pay you can find gorgeous UI frameworks on the market. Generally, they offer a free trial:

DevExpress

Infragistics

Syncfusion

...and many more.