ComponentOne Gauges for WPF and Silverlight
About C1Gauges / Why Use Gauge Controls?
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    Why Use Gauge Controls?
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    You might be asking why you'd need to use gauge controls – after all, gauges just display a single value and you could display that value using a simple label instead of a gauge.

    Gauges are better because they also display a range, allowing users to determine instantly whether the current value is low, high, or intermediate. You could use two additional labels to display the range as well as the current value, but that would make your user interface more confusing. That is why many applications use progress indicators that are simple linear gauges, instead of showing progress simply as a label.

    Gauges are also more visually attractive than simple labels (or sliders or scrollbars), and that adds value to your applications.

    But why use a gauge control instead of simply asking a designer to create a visually attractive gauge in XAML and then animating an element to show the current value? Why use a control?

    There are a couple of reasons for that. First, you may not be a great designer and may not have access to one. Second, you probably don't need a single gauge in your application. You may need several, showing values that span different ranges. Maybe you don't even know the actual range when you are writing the application (what's the maximum value of sales this quarter?).

    Gauge controls provide the flexibility to adjust the ranges programmatically, based on data, rather than hardwiring them in XAML.