Chapter 5. Advanced Control Development
IN THIS CHAPTER
The process of building custom controls has been greatly simplified due to the richness of the base class libraries available in .NET. Already you possess the knowledge and skill necessary to create a wide assortment of controls. All that remains is learning about the services provided by the base class libraries and the VS .NET support for custom control development. In this chapter, all control and designer base classes, interfaces, events, and attributes are discussed at various levels of detail.
In this chapter, more details of the base class libraries, designers, and services are explored. Other than learning what services are available for building controls and their associated designers, an understanding of where to begin or what base class should be used is all that needs to be refined.
.NET also introduces the concept of attributes. Attributes are used to provide additional information about classes, properties, methods, and parameters. Control development makes use of various attributes, covered in this chapter, to associate controls with designers and properties with editors. Attributes provide an extremely flexible mechanism for loosely coupling components and promoting reusability.