InputPanel for WinForms | ComponentOne
In This Topic
    Design-Time Support
    In This Topic

    InputPanel provides customized context menus, smart tags, and designers that offer rich design-time support and simplify working with the object model.

    Tasks Menu

    A task menu provides you an easy access to the commonly used properties of a control. To access the C1InputPanel Tasks menu, click on the smart tag (Smart tag) in the upper right corner of the InputPanel control.

    InputPanel tasks menu

    Following table describes all the options provided by the C1InputPanel Tasks menu.

    Option Description
    Add New Item The dropdown box provides a list of input components to choose from.
    Edit Items This option opens the C1InputPanel Items Collection Editor to add, move or remove InputPanel components.
    Check Accelerators This option opens the Check Keyboard Accelerators designer which lets you check or clear the keyboard accelerators assigned to the InputPanel fields.
    Clear All Items This option removes all the components from the InputPanel control.
    Choose Data Source The dropdown opens a list of available data sources and allows you to add a new data source. To add a new data source to the project, click Add Project Data Source to open the Data Source Configuration Wizard.
    Visual Style The dropdown opens a list box of several built-in schemes for you to choose from. The default visual style is System.
    Load From XML File This option opens the Load from XML File dialog box, which you can use to navigate and select an XML file to load the InputPanel layout.
    Save As XML File This option opens the Save as XML File dialog box, which you can use to navigate and save the InputPanel layout as an XML file.
    About C1InputPanel This option displays the About C1InputPanel dialog box, which indicates the version of C1InputPanel and license details.
    Add Query... This option gets displayed when the InputPanel control is bound to a data source. When clicked, it displays the Search Criteria Builder dialog box, which lets you create a SQL query to display data on selective basis.
    Preview Data... This option gets displayed when the InputPanel control is bound to a data source. When clicked, it displays the Preview Data dialog that lets you preview the selected object.

    Context Menu

    InputPanel also provides some of its commonly-used operations through the context menu, which is invoked by right clicking the control. Hence, in the context menu, some of the options are specific to InputPanel operations.

    Input panel context menu

    Option Description
    Edit Items This option opens the C1InputPanel Items Collection Editor to add, move or remove InputPanel components.
    Check Accelerators This option opens the Check Keyboard Accelerators designer which lets you check or clear the keyboard accelerators assigned to the InputPanel fields.
    Clear All Items This option removes all the components from the InputPanel control.
    Load From XML File This option opens the Load from XML File dialog box, which you can use to navigate and select an XML file to load the InputPanel layout.
    Save As XML File This option opens the Save as XML File dialog box, which you can use to navigate and save the InputPanel layout as an XML file.
    About C1InputPanel This option displays the About C1InputPanel dialog box, which indicates the version of C1InputPanel and license details.

    Designer Toolbox Window

    InputPanel now provides a useful design-time feature in .NET Framework, to let you drag and drop items from a toolbox-like window onto the InputPanel control.

    The GIF depicts a scenario where the user adds items like InputFlowPanel, InputGridPanel, buttons, comboxes, rangeslider etc. to the InputPanel using the drag and drop feature at design time.

    Note: WinForms .NET Edition does not include rich design-time support yet. We will enhance it in the future releases.
    See Also