User Controls - In separate DLL - No design time support / Making Read Only

Question

I want to have a common control library with a whole bunch of User Controls for dealing with common UI scenarios (login etc)

My plan was to have a separate dll for these. But this seems to mean that I lose designer support for them in the referencing application.

Is there any alternative apart from just including a separate copy of each control in the application that makes use of them. This article suggests not

And if I have to include a separate copy. I wonder if there's a clever way to make these controls read only so people can't edit them.

Answer 1

First question: are these web controls or server controls? you'll need to create server controls to do what your looking for.

What you seem to be looking at is to separating your controls to a new project (class library or something similar). Then you can compile and reference it independently wherever you need them, either directly to the project or to the compiled DLL.

You can either include the project in your main solutions, but to keep it read only as you said, you'll need to only provide the DLL to the other projects.

Make sure your controls are set to public, else the designed won't see them.