Question

I have a custom user control that fires an exception when trying to add it to the designer view. (More information on that bug here)

I was told that I have to tell the designer to not acknowledge that control so it does not serialize it. I found this MSDN article that seems to do what I want. I’m assuming this will fix my error, hopefully! 🙂 (If you have better ideas please let me know how to fix this bug.)

How can I add that metadata to my class to Hidden or Content? Thanks!

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Drawing;
using System.Data;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using System.Collections.ObjectModel;
using System.Runtime.Serialization;
using System.ComponentModel.Design.Serialization;

namespace WinformsPlayground
{
    [DesignerSerializerAttribute()] //THE QUESTION IS HERE!
    public partial class HorizontalPictureScroller : UserControl
    {
        public HorizontalPictureScroller()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
            Pictures = new ObservableCollection<SelectablePicture>();
            Pictures.CollectionChanged += new System.Collections.Specialized.NotifyCollectionChangedEventHandler(Pictures_CollectionChanged);
        }       

        #region "Properties"
        public ObservableCollection<SelectablePicture> Pictures { get; set; }
        private int PositionControlX = 0;
        #endregion

        #region "Methods"
        private void RedrawPictures()
        {
            PositionControlX = 0;

            foreach (var picture in Pictures)
            {
                picture.Location = new Point(PositionControlX + panelPicturesWrapper.AutoScrollPosition.X, 0);
                PositionControlX += 130;
                panelPicturesWrapper.Controls.Add(picture);
            }
        }

        public void AddPicture(SelectablePicture picture)
        {
            Pictures.Add(picture);
        }

        public void RemovePicture(SelectablePicture picture)
        {
            Pictures.Remove(picture);
        }

        public void MovePictureLeft(int index)
        {
            SelectablePicture tmpPicture = Pictures[index];
            Pictures[index] = Pictures[index - 1];
            Pictures[index - 1] = tmpPicture;
        }

        public void MovePictureRight(int index)
        {
            SelectablePicture tmpPicture = Pictures[index];
            Pictures[index] = Pictures[index + 1];
            Pictures[index + 1] = tmpPicture;
        }
        #endregion

        #region "Events"
        void Pictures_CollectionChanged(object sender, System.Collections.Specialized.NotifyCollectionChangedEventArgs e)
        {
            RedrawPictures();
        }
        #endregion
    }
}

EDIT: Following advice here I added this to the top of the class but I receive an error when compiling.

namespace WinformsPlayground
{
    [DesignerSerializationVisibility(DesignerSerializationVisibility.Hidden)]
    public partial class HorizontalPictureScroller : UserControl
    {
        public HorizontalPictureScroller()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
            Pictures = new ObservableCollection<SelectablePicture>();
            Pictures.CollectionChanged += new System.Collections.Specialized.NotifyCollectionChangedEventHandler(Pictures_CollectionChanged);
        }  

Error is:

Error 1 Attribute
‘DesignerSerializationVisibility’ is
not valid on this declaration type. It
is only valid on ‘method, property,
indexer, field, event’
declarations. C:\Users\Sergio.Tapia\documents\visual
studio
2010\Projects\WinformsPlayground\WinformsPlayground\HorizontalPictureScroller.cs 15 6 WinformsPlayground

Answer 1

I’m not sure, but it may be choking on your public serializable list of pictures. Just for testing, I would try adding the following immediately above this one property on your class

[DesignerSerializationVisibility(DesignerSerializationVisibility.Hidden)]

I believe if you make it hidden, it won’t make it an editable value from the properties sheet, and thus not actually try to write the object’s serialization content.