Windows Forms Programming in Visual Basic .NET

UI Type Editors

ExpandableObjectConverters help break down a complex multivalue property into a nested list of its atomic values. Although this technique simplifies editing of a complicated property, it may not be suitable for other properties that exhibit the following behavior:

• Hard to construct, interpret, or validate, such as a regular expression

• One of a list of values so large it would be difficult to remember all of them

• A visual property, such as a ForeColor, that is not easily represented as a string

Actually, the ForeColor property satisfies all three points. First, it would be hard to find the color you wanted by typing comma-separated integers like 33, 86, 24 or guessing a named color, like PapayaWhip. Second, there are a lot of colors ...