Distributing Controls to developers

J

J.Marsch

We are building an extensive library of Webform and Winform controls, and I
have a lot of questions about how to control distribution of our control
assemblies to our own developers.

Here's one:
We have an assembly that contains all of our web controls. Now, there is
some logical grouping these controls, such that it would be really handy to
be able to put the controls on different tabs in the toolbox. I think that
what would be ideal would be this: When a developer adds the assembly to
the toolbox, it automatically creates some tabs (if they are not already
there), and the appropriate controls are added to each tab. Is there a way
to do that?
 
T

Tian Min Huang

Hi,

Thanks for your post. As I understand, you created several custom web
controls in a Web Control Library. Now you want to create some tabs if
needed in the Toolbox, and put each custom control to its corresponding Tab
when you add the assembly to the toolbax. Please correct me if there is any
misunderstanding. Now I'd like to share the following information with you:

1. Based on my experience and research, we are not able to programmatically
put a custom control to a specific Tab in the Toolbox in the control
library. It is decided by the selected Tab where you right-click mouse and
choose "Add/Remove Items". It's the same with the stock controls. For
example, we are free to move (drag-n-drop) TextBox from "Web Forms" tab to
"Data" tab, this information will persist and the TextBox control will say
at "Data" tab when we restart Visual Studio .NET.

2. You may be able to manipulate the Toobar by make use of the Visual
Studio .NET automation model in a Visual Studio .NET Add-In. I do not
recommend this method, because it's just one time operation to manually add
Toolbox Tabs and drag-n-drop controls between Tabs.

If you are interested in Visual Studio .NET automation model, please refer
to the following MSDN article:

Automation and Extensibility Overview
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dv_vstechar
t/html/vsoriautomationextensibilityoverview.asp

Please feel free to let me know if you have any problems or concerns.

Have a nice day!

Regards,

HuangTM
Microsoft Online Partner Support
MCSE/MCSD

Get Secure! -- www.microsoft.com/security
This posting is provided "as is" with no warranties and confers no rights.
 
J

John Saunders

Tian Min Huang said:
Hi,

Thanks for your post. As I understand, you created several custom web
controls in a Web Control Library. Now you want to create some tabs if
needed in the Toolbox, and put each custom control to its corresponding Tab
when you add the assembly to the toolbax. Please correct me if there is any
misunderstanding. Now I'd like to share the following information with you:

1. Based on my experience and research, we are not able to programmatically
put a custom control to a specific Tab in the Toolbox in the control
library. It is decided by the selected Tab where you right-click mouse and
choose "Add/Remove Items". It's the same with the stock controls. For
example, we are free to move (drag-n-drop) TextBox from "Web Forms" tab to
"Data" tab, this information will persist and the TextBox control will say
at "Data" tab when we restart Visual Studio .NET.

2. You may be able to manipulate the Toobar by make use of the Visual
Studio .NET automation model in a Visual Studio .NET Add-In. I do not
recommend this method, because it's just one time operation to manually add
Toolbox Tabs and drag-n-drop controls between Tabs.

Mr. Huang,

Sorry to intrude on this conversation, but I wanted to mention that I know
of a complicated control which creates several tabs when it is configured.
The tabs are all for different parts of the controls UI. It does this when
one of its controls is dragged to the page for the first time.
 
T

Tian Min Huang

Hi John,

Thanks a lot for your information. I'm not familiar with the control you
referenced. I suspect it is automating Visual Studio .NET as I already
described.

Have a nice day!

Regards,

HuangTM
Microsoft Online Partner Support
MCSE/MCSD

Get Secure! -- www.microsoft.com/security
This posting is provided "as is" with no warranties and confers no rights.
 

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