WinForms Events for Inheriting Controls for UI Style

Question

Follow up to this question:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/553518/winforms-style-ui-look-and-feel-tips

So I have created my "base controls" from which other controls inherit from. For testing, I am trying to change one of the base label's font. But it is not propagating to the controls that inherit from it. On one of the forms, I can see the designer file is setting the properties for the control, so my base control's properties are getting overridden.

On the base control's I am using the Constructor to set the default properties. Should I be using a different event? If so, which one.

Here is the code for one of the base controls based on comment request...

Public Class InfoLabel
    Inherits Label

    Public Sub New()
     ' This call is required by the Windows Form Designer.
     InitializeComponent()

     ' Add any initialization after the InitializeComponent() call.
     Me.Font = New System.Drawing.Font("Tahoma", 14.25!)
     Me.ForeColor = System.Drawing.Color.FromArgb(CType(CType(49, Byte), Integer), CType(CType(97, Byte), Integer), CType(CType(156, Byte), Integer))
     Me.AutoSize = False

    End Sub
End Class

The base controls show on the projects toolbox on the winform editor. Controls are then drag/drop from the toolbox.

Answer 1

Your problem is your custom control's InitializeComponent() method. I have no idea why that is there. You would get that method automatically if you were implementing a UserControl, but inheriting from a standard control that method should not be there. With your base class having an InitializeComponent() method and your subclass also having one, someone is overwriting someone else.

I just subclassed a label in C#. I dragged this on my form and the font displayed as the new font, not the base (Label) class's font.

using System.Drawing;
using System.Windows.Forms;

namespace WindowsFormsApplication1
{
    public class MyLabel : Label
    {
        public MyLabel()
        {
            Font = new Font("Candara", 14);
        }
    }
}

I then created a second label, called MySubLabel which inherited from the MyLabel class. When I changed the ForeColor on the MyLabel class, the MySubLabel automatically updated.

So this should work.

Caveat: in Visual Studio you need to recompile the assembly before trying to see updates in the designer.