Power of the .NET design-time infrastructure, hiding its complexity.
Editor: 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 applications 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. you can free download LMD DesignPack.NET 1.0 now.