Question

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Winforms Style / UI Look and Feel Tips

So I have created my ‘base controls’ from which other controls inherit from. For testing, I am trying to change one of the base label’s font. But it is not propagating to the controls that inherit from it. On one of the forms, I can see the designer file is setting the properties for the control, so my base control’s properties are getting overridden.

On the base control’s I am using the Constructor to set the default properties. Should I be using a different event? If so, which one.

Here is the code for one of the base controls based on comment request…

Public Class InfoLabel     Inherits Label      Public Sub New()         ' This call is required by the Windows Form Designer.         InitializeComponent()          ' Add any initialization after the InitializeComponent() call.         Me.Font = New System.Drawing.Font('Tahoma', 14.25!)         Me.ForeColor = System.Drawing.Color.FromArgb(CType(CType(49, Byte), Integer), CType(CType(97, Byte), Integer), CType(CType(156, Byte), Integer))         Me.AutoSize = False      End Sub End Class 

The base controls show on the projects toolbox on the winform editor. Controls are then drag/drop from the toolbox.

Answer 1

Your problem is your custom control’s InitializeComponent() method. I have no idea why that is there. You would get that method automatically if you were implementing a UserControl, but inheriting from a standard control that method should not be there. With your base class having an InitializeComponent() method and your subclass also having one, someone is overwriting someone else.

I just subclassed a label in C#. I dragged this on my form and the font displayed as the new font, not the base (Label) class’s font.

using System.Drawing; using System.Windows.Forms;  namespace WindowsFormsApplication1 {     public class MyLabel : Label     {         public MyLabel()         {             Font = new Font('Candara', 14);         }     } } 

I then created a second label, called MySubLabel which inherited from the MyLabel class. When I changed the ForeColor on the MyLabel class, the MySubLabel automatically updated.

So this should work.

Caveat: in Visual Studio you need to recompile the assembly before trying to see updates in the designer.