Question

I am creating a user interface and I am trying to figure out the best way to organize all of my custom controls.

I already know that I can do the following:

1) If I want to have a property visible for design-time manipulation via the Properties window, I use the following…

    [Browsable(true)]
    [Description("Text for Display"), Category("Custom Properties")]
    public string DisplayText
    {
        get
        {
            return textDisplay.DisplayText;
        }

        set
        {
            textDisplay.DisplayText = value;
        }
    }

2) If I want to hide the control from the Toolbox window, I can use the following…

[ToolboxItem(false)]
public class TStrategyInput : FlickerControl
{
}

The final thing that I am trying to do is to specify the Tab (i.e. category) that my custom control comes up under in the Toolbox window – does anyone have any suggestions? Are there any other tricks out there for handling custom controls?

Thanks in advance!
William

Answer 1

Take a look at this MSDN Walkthrough:Autoloading Toolbox Items.

From above:

The recommended way to add custom controls to the Toolbox is to use
the Toolbox Control templates that come with the Visual Studio 10 SDK,
which include auto-loading support. This topic is retained for
backward compatibility, for adding existing controls to the Toolbox,
and for advanced Toolbox development.

Looking at the Window Forms Toolbox Control that above walkthrough mentions:

[ProvideToolboxControl("General", false)]
public partial class Counter : UserControl