General Information
Introduction
Key Features
Order Links (switches to order page)

Screenshots
Screenshot 1 - DesignPack.Toolbox
Screenshot 2 - DesignPack.ObjectFieldList
Screenshot 3 - Designer Form
Screenshot 4 - High-level diagram of the package

Component Overview
Components of LMD DesignPack.NET 1.0


Introduction

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LMD DesignPack.NET is a solution which exposes to Windows Forms applications developers the full power of the .NET design-time infrastructure, hiding its complexity.

At the application run-time a visual designer can be created for any form or control of the application using the LMDDesignSurface component, the controls can be moved/resized, added (simply by dragging-dropping then from the LMD Toolbox control) or deleted; properties of the components including their event handlers can be viewed and modified with the LMDPropertyGrid control (with native support for the EventsTab). Methods from the compiled assembly containing the designed control and methods from the script written by the user can be selected as event handlers. All the modifications made to the designed form/control can be immediately effective at the application run-time, and can also be stored to and loaded from XML documents.

There are many cases when the designing functionality can be useful in the application:

• providing users with the possibility to customize application's forms (windows) look and feel (and even functionality!);
• implementing a report designer;
• developing an IDE-like application;
• etc.;

While the MS designing infrastructure working behind the scenes is rather complex and sophisticated, using the LMD DesignPack.NET components is easy and straight-forward, and mostly the same in all of the use cases listed above. A basic usage scenario which corresponds to the first use case (customizable application form) can be found in the Getting started section.

The LMD DesignPack.NET package is fully integrated with the native .NET Windows Forms design infrastructure (implementing certain core components used by the MS Visual Studio IDEs but not provided by the .NET platform to application developers, see Package Architecture topic for details) and supports any standard or additional third-party property editors and component designers developed for the MS Visual Studio IDEs.

Certain differences between the design infrastructures in the .NET 1.1 and .NET 2.0 platforms are completely hidden from the LMD DesignPack.NET user who can access and use all the design features in a uniform way with both platform versions.

The LMD DesignPack.NET package is implemented in C# language, contains 100% managed code, is compatible with versions 1.1 and 2.0 of the Microsoft .NET Framework and is designed for MS Visual Studio 2003/2005 IDE families (can also be used in Borland BDS2006 IDE).