Q: Advice / Tip on inheritance.

[Martin Arvidsson, Visual Systems AB]

Hi!

I am going to create a common form for use on reporting.

It may also be possible that i add functionality to the form that the report
forms are inherited from, such as buttons, etc.

I want this to become available in the inherited forms. Thats the easy part.

But, are there any traps, when doing this, lets say, the layout will go nuts
on the inherited forms?

Any guides, links would be appreciated.

Regards
Martin

 

[Frans Bouma [C# MVP]]

Hi!

I am going to create a common form for use on reporting.

It may also be possible that i add functionality to the form that the
report forms are inherited from, such as buttons, etc.

I want this to become available in the inherited forms. Thats the
easy part.

But, are there any traps, when doing this, lets say, the layout will
go nuts on the inherited forms?

Any guides, links would be appreciated.

What I heard is that visual inheritance isn't the most stable part of
vs.net 2005. I'd go for user controls instead.

FB

--
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Lead developer of LLBLGen Pro, the productive O/R mapper for .NET
LLBLGen Pro website: http://www.llblgen.com
My .NET blog: http://weblogs.asp.net/fbouma
Microsoft MVP (C#)
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[Barry Kelly]

I am going to create a common form for use on reporting.

It may also be possible that i add functionality to the form that the report
forms are inherited from, such as buttons, etc.

I want this to become available in the inherited forms. Thats the easy part.

But, are there any traps, when doing this, lets say, the layout will go nuts
on the inherited forms?

I'd second what Frans said, if you plan on actually using the designer
to tweak these forms, as opposed to doing it in code. A lot of stuff
becomes read-only in descendants, even when there's no logical necessity
for it.

I have had good results with careful coding, but that was possible
because I didn't need to rely on the designer, and I still used
UserControl as a central way of plugging e.g. document views into a tab
control.

-- Barry

 

[Kevin Spencer]

Here's a good reference:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/37899azc.aspx

--
HTH,

Kevin Spencer
Microsoft MVP

Printing Components, Email Components,
FTP Client Classes, Enhanced Data Controls, much more.
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