Using the Designer Explorer Tool

The Visual Basic doesn't offer a way to visualize the controls hierarchy hosted in a designer window. The controls can be overlapped, included in containers or simply out of the visibility range. Working with such designers and selecting controls inside them can become distressing. With the CodeSMART Designer Explorer tool you can obtain, at any moment, the complete hierarchy of controls and in addition to that you can perform several operations on it.

To use the Designer Explorer tool:

1. Open a Visual Basic form or user control designer.
2. Press the Project Explorer button on the Navigation and IDE Tools toolbar to display the CodeSMART Project Explorer (quick toolbar and menu references are available).
3. In the CodeSMART Project Explorer window click the Designer tab to display the controls hierarchy hosted by the current designer.

   

4. The toolbar contains all the available operations that allows you to perform designer analysis, tab ordering, refreshing, controls reorganizing, and so on.

   



5. The upper pane (Designer Controls) alphabetically lists all the controls in the current designer. Selecting a control in the tree automatically selects it on the Designer and vice versa. There are several commands available for a selected control:
   • Go To Control: moves the focus to the designer window so you can change directly the control's size or position.
   • Show Properties: opens the Properties window for the selected control.
   • Delete: removes the selected control from the designer (the operation cannot be undone.)
   • Find Control References: searches for selected control name references in the active component code.
   • Autopick Hotkey: tries to set an available hotkey character for the selected control's Caption property.
   • Change Name and Text: opens the dedicated CodeSMART dialog where you can directly change the control's Name and Text or Caption properties.
   • Refresh: refreshes the controls hierarchy and the properties for the selected item.
   • Bring To Front: brings the selected control on top of all the other controls.
   • Sent To Back: send the selected controls behind all the other controls.
   • Sort by Name: the control nodes are sorted alphabetically.
   • Sort by Tab Order: the control nodes are sorted considering their tab order values.


6. In the lower pane (Navigation) CodeSMART displays a list of all the available designer components, which you can browse, activate, refresh, perform source-safe operations on, etc.

   

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