Issues with Visual Studio Designer

Symptoms:

• Properties are missing in Properties pane.
• Some properties cannot be edited.
• Properties are dimmed in the properties pane.
• Descriptions for the properties are missing.

When a custom control is made, there are several characteristics which can be set for the events and properties of the control (e.g., default value, whether the property should be visible in VS Designer or not, its description, type converter, etc.). These characteristics are called attributes and they are stored in separate assembly (dll file) than the control itself. These attribute assemblies contain ‘asmmeta’ in their names (e.g., BeeMobile.TransparentControls.PocketPC.asmmeta.dll).

We ship the asmmeta files together with the main control assembly so that Visual Studio Designer can find that assembly when the main control assembly is added among the project’s references. Once you build your project for the first time, Visual Studio will copy the main control assembly to the output build folder. Furthermore it will also change the reference path to the main control assembly so that it now also points to the build output folder. Visual Studio Designer will continue to work fine though, because Visual Studio will remember where the ‘asmmeta’ files were…. unless you copy the project to another folder.

If you create another project by copying an existing one, it may happen that Visual Studio won’t be able to find the ‘asmmeta’ files and therefore Visual Studio Designer will stop working correctly. The only solution (we have found out so far) is to remove all Bee Mobile references from the project and add them anew from the folder in which the ‘asmmeta’ files are.