Visual Studio Hacks

Customize the Toolbox #27

Chapter 4, Customizing Visual Studio

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HACK

HACK

#27

Customize the Toolbox Hack #27

Everything you need can be at your fingertips in Visual Studio’s toolbox. In

this hack, learn how to enhance the toolbox with custom controls and code

snippets.

The toolbox is used to store controls and code snippets. The controls and

code snippets can be dragged from the toolbox to either the editor or the

code window. The toolbox is designed to save time during development.

Instead of writing control code manually, you can drag and drop controls or

code snippets.

Controls and the Toolbox

The most common use of the toolbox is for Windows controls and web con-

trols (including HTML controls). When you work with either the Windows

Forms designer or the Web Forms Designer, you will constantly interact

with the toolbox to drag and drop controls onto the designer. By default, the

toolbox contains controls from within the .NET Framework, but you can

also add custom controls to the toolbox. Adding new controls to the tool-

box is a relatively simple procedure.

First, right-click on the tab of the toolbox you want to add the control to

and select Add/Remove Items; this will display the dialog shown in

Figure 4-12.

From this dialog, you simply need to select your control from the list of .NET

Framework Components or COM Components or use the Browse button to

manually browse for the control. When browsing ...