Visual Basic Concepts

Inserting a New Instance of an ActiveX Designer

See Also

Once you've used the Components dialog box to add a designer to the Project menu, you can insert as many instances of the designer as you need.

To insert an instance of an ActiveX Designer

• On the Project menu, click Add designer (where designer is the name of the designer) to display a list of installed designers. Pick the designer you want from the list.

  Note   If more than four kinds of ActiveX designers are loaded, the later ones will be displayed from the More ActiveX Designers submenu on the Project menu.

Once you've added an instance of an ActiveX designer to your project, you can use its visual interface to design a class. You can click the Code button on the Project window to open the code module for the designer, and add code to event procedures. You can further customize the class by adding by adding your own properties, methods, and events, just as you would in a Visual Basic class module.

ActiveX Designers and SourceCode Control

When using ActiveX designers with a SourceCode control package such as Visual SourceSafe, the behavior may differ from that of built-in designers. When attempting to edit a file created by a designer, you may not be prompted to check out the file before editing. Additionally, some designers write files out to the file system; SourceCode control may not be aware of these files.

To add a designer-authored file to SourceCode control:

1. Choose Add File from the Project menu.
   
   
2. Select the file you wish to add from the Add File dialog box, then check the Add As Related Document checkbox and click Open.

   This will add the file to your project as a related document. The SourceCode control package will prompt you to add the file (this may occur when you add the file or when you next save the project, depending on the SourceCode control package).

Note   Files created with Visual Basic's HTML Page Designer can optionally store the HTML that it writes with the designer (.dsr) file. If you wish to add these files to SourceCode control, you need to check the Save HTML as part of the VB Project checkbox on the Page Designer's property page.

For More Information   Designers are introduced in "ActiveX Designers." To add a designer to the Project menu, see "Adding an ActiveX Designer to the Project Menu."