CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#.netwinformswindows-forms-designer
Michael
Michael

Reputation: 1421

Visual Studio Form Designer Showing List of Controls

I know that getting the Form Designer to work is a ticklish business. Generics, x64, subtle problems with the project's XML... But perhaps someone can offer advice about my current problem, which is that a component I created that inherits from TabPage, when I try to view it in the designer shows up as a list of its controls, like this:

enter image description here

Thanks in advance.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1356

Answers (1)

Reza Aghaei
Reza Aghaei

Reputation: 125322

You cannot make a TabPage as root of the designer, while you can do the same for a Panel or other container controls. The limitation is because, TabPage can only be hosted in TabControl, not even in the overlay control of the designer:

TabPage cannot be added to a 'System.Windows.Forms.Design.DesignerFrame+OverlayControl'. TabPages can only be added to TabControls.

A control can be shown as root of the designer when the base class of the control has designer of type of DocumentDesigner. Form and UserControl are such controls which means when you create a new Form1:Form or new UserControl1:UserControl, since the base class derived from a designable control, then the class can be edited in the designer as root.

I believe you can handle your requirement by using UserControl, but for learning purpose (or as a workaround) if you want to make a control deriving from Panel designable, you can copy the following code in a code file:

public class MyControl: MyDesignableControl
{
}
[Designer(typeof(DocumentDesigner), typeof(IRootDesigner))]
public class MyDesignableControl : Panel
{

}

Then save it and then double click on it and you can see you can design it like a root control.

Then after you done with the design, change the Panel to TabPage.

Remarks on DocumentDesigner

This designer is a root designer, meaning that it provides the root-level design mode view for the associated document when it is viewed in design mode.

You can associate a designer with a type using a DesignerAttribute. For an overview of customizing design time behavior, see Extending Design-Time Support.

Upvotes: 2

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