Windows Forms 2.0 Programming (Microsoft .NET Development Series)

In Chapter 11, we looked at a variety of design-time integration features, most of which target the behavior of a component in the Properties window. In this chapter, we've expanded our integration through the use of custom designers and smart tags. Custom designers are the primary mechanism by which you implement design-time-only functionality for your components. One special type of design-time-only functionality is smart tags, which is enabled by leveraging the .NET Framework's designer action infrastructure.

The key reason to consider using custom designers and smart tags, in addition to nicer integration with the Properties window, is to enhance the usability of your components. To this end, the design-time infrastructure is far richer than what we've uncovered in Chapter 11 and this chapter, although you've seen a vast majority of the fundamental features that you should become familiar with if you intend to build and deploy components that offer enhanced capabilities at design-time.