Looking at the code in winforms, is there a way to highlight, display, or otherwise go to the object in the designer?
For example, if the designer generated code has an event assigned to a button click:
this.button1.Click += new System.EventHandler(this.DoSomething);
... is there any way to navigate back and see button1 in the designer, short of looping through the properties for every object?
By the way, this is using VS 2013 for the IDE.
Related
i have a very simple question but i just can't find the answer. I have an existing Windows forms project which shows me an interface with lots of different buttons when i run it in Visual Studio 2019.
Now i want to find a way to find the code belonging to a button. I already tried clicking the buttons, but nothing happens.
So my question is: How can i automatically jump to the code that is related to one of the buttons?
Thanks a lot!
I am assuming that when you say "the code belonging to a button", you are referring to the code that runs when the button is clicked. In this case there are several ways of getting to this code.
In Winforms (not sure about anything else) you should be able to double click on the button and visual studio should navigate automatically to the code in the Button.Click event. If there is no Button.Click event handler for the button, it will create one.
Another way to get there is to select the button in the designer and go to the properties window(press F4). In the properties window go to the events list(see images), then double click on the "Click" event in this list and you should be directed to the code in the Button.Click event handler. If there is none, it will create one.
I hope this helps. If not, provide more details about your issue.
I have a simple user control (just an example): it is 40x100, but resizable. It has two buttons, one anchored at the top, one anchored at the bottom.
It put this control on a form and stretch it to 40x400. This works fine.
But as soon as I switch the form to Localizable = True and change the language to translate any strings, the Designer shows the user control
as if it was 40x100 for both the default an the translated language, i.e. the bottom button is not anchored.
Or better: the bottom button is displayed as if it was not anchored. The control occupies the correct amount of space (40x400), though (see selection highlight). And it displays fine during runtime, this is just a Designer issue.
A picture showing the issue.
Did I miss something here? Is this how it is supposed to work?
Im on VS2010 at the moment, tried the old VS2005 but it's the same there.
Thanks...
I could easily repro this problem by anchoring the second button to the bottom. The Anchor property has a few oddish failure modes, layout isn't always recalculated when it should be. You found one such case. I think the underlying issue is that the Size property is a localizable property as well and the designer fails to fire the required events when it starts a new localization set. Something like that, nothing very trivial.
You'll need to punt this problem and not rely on the Anchor property to get the button positioned correctly. That just takes a one-liner in your UserControl code, like:
protected override void OnResize(EventArgs e) {
button2.Top = this.ClientSize.Height - button2.Height;
base.OnResize(e);
}
I downloaded a project off codeproject and was messing around with it (I am more an asp.net developer) when I noticed these overlay icons...the lock one on the label is really interesting as when I right click the control is unlocked yet all the properties are grayed out. When I add a new label I do not have that lock icon when I select it. What is this? Also what is the double boxes icon (the other 8 that are highlighted)?
The Winforms designer observes standard .NET accessibility keywords. The Modifiers keyword for a control is what counts here. That sets the access keyword for the member variable. The default for a C# project is private, for a VB.NET project it is Friend. VB.NET is more friendly about it.
That matters when you derive a form from a base form, Project + Add New Item, Windows Forms node, Inherited Form item template. The derived form will have the controls of the base form but they cannot be changed if their Modifiers property is Private. The designer makes it obvious by displaying the lock icon. And by displaying the properties of the control in gray text.
Normally this means that the controls are defined in the base control and so you cannot change them in the derived control (so they are all locked).
I’ve met strange behaviour for WPF design-time in Visual Studio 2010: after an instance of the Popup class was created, and I switched the code tab in Visual Studio to a different file, the Popup still remains on the screen!
I have a piece of code, which allows to reproduce this, but I am not sure if I should paste it here (it's not so short), so maybe I'll just give a link to it: here.
For unknown reasons beyond mere mortals' comprehension, Microsoft has decided this is the default behavior of the Popup class in WPF. You have to implement the "hiding" logic yourself. I suggest handling the Window.LocationChanged, Window.Activated and Window.Deactivated events of the Window containing the Popup and close it yourself.
Edit: To clarify myself, the Window events you need to handle are the events of the window that contains the Popup's PlacementTarget element. Usually when you create a popup, you set it relative to some element contained in an application's Window (similar to how the tooltips work). If this is your case, then my solution is correct, but I forgot to mention this point about the PlacementTarget.
In your code behind; you can simple check this boolean:
DesignerProperties.GetIsInDesignMode(this);
"this" represent the object containing the popup. For example the Window.
If true you can say:
myPopUp.IsOpen = false;
For Store Apps/WinRT:
Windows.ApplicationModel.DesignMode.DesignModeEnabled
I am working on a WinForm Application.
The Form has many fields/components but is poorly built.
for example a field is used as user name on one case and used as folder path on the other case. Code is quite poorly maintaned.
Is is possible that when i run the application and GUI appears, i can use a tool like 'spy++' which can show me 'names' of the components (not ids). For instance the name of a button or name of a label.
Or if i can use SPY++ for 'names' please tell me?
I would solve the problem by adding a ToolTip control to your form and iterating over each control and adding a Tool Tip message to each control that is the name of the control.
First, add a ToolTip object to your form (from the Tools section of the designer.) You can rename it, but for the sake of my demo, I left it as the default name toolTip1.
Next, add a method similar to the one I'm posting below to the code page of your form. (I'm assuming this is for C# but the code is simple and can easily be modified for VB or C++).
public void AddNameToToolTip(Control c)
{
toolTip1.SetToolTip(c, c.Name);
foreach (Control child in c.Controls) AddNameToToolTip(child);
}
Finally, from within the Form constructor, add the following line of code after the call to InitializeComponent().
AddNameToToolTip(this);
This will add a ToolTip message to each control in your form. All you should have to do is hover your mouse over each control and the ToolTip will pop up a message after a second or two displaying the name of the underlying control.
Alternatively, you can recursively adding a MouseHover event to each control and when the event is fired, write the name of the control to the debugger. This would also work if you are already using a ToolTip control within your form.