How to: Use the Modifiers and GenerateMember Properties

  • Article

When you place a component on a Windows Form, two properties are provided by the design environment: GenerateMember and Modifiers. The GenerateMember property specifies when the Windows Forms Designer generates a member variable for a component. The Modifiers property is the access modifier assigned to that member variable. If the value of the GenerateMember property is false, the value of the Modifiers property has no effect.

Note

The dialog boxes and menu commands you see might differ from those described in Help depending on your active settings or edition. To change your settings, choose Import and Export Settings on the Tools menu. For more information, see Working with Settings.

To specify whether a component is a member of the form

  1. In the Windows Forms Designer, open your form.

  2. Open the Toolbox, and on the form, place three Button controls.

  3. Set the GenerateMember and Modifiers properties for each Button control according to the following table.

    Button name

    GenerateMember value

    Modifiers value

    button1

    true

    private

    button2

    true

    protected

    button3

    false

    No change

  4. Build the solution.

  5. In Solution Explorer, click the Show All Files button.

  6. Open the Form1 node, and in the Code Editor,open the Form1.Designer.vb or Form1.Designer.cs file. This file contains the code emitted by the Windows Forms Designer.

  7. Find the declarations for the three buttons. The following code example shows the differences specified by the GenerateMember and Modifiers properties.

    Private Sub InitializeComponent()

    ' button3 is declared in a local scope, because 
    ' its GenerateMember property is false.
    Dim button3 As System.Windows.Forms.Button
    Me.button1 = New System.Windows.Forms.Button()
    Me.button2 = New System.Windows.Forms.Button()
    button3 = New System.Windows.Forms.Button()

    private void InitializeComponent()
{   
    // button3 is declared in a local scope, because 
    // its GenerateMember property is false.
    System.Windows.Forms.Button button3;
    this.button1 = new System.Windows.Forms.Button();
    this.button2 = new System.Windows.Forms.Button();
    button3 = new System.Windows.Forms.Button();

     ' The Modifiers property for button1 is "Private".
 Private button1 As Button

 ' The Modifiers property for button2 is "Protected".
 Protected button2 As Button

' button3 is not a member, because 
' its GenerateMember property is false.

    // The Modifiers property for button1 is "private".
private Button button1;

// The Modifiers property for button2 is "protected".
protected Button button2;

// button3 is not a member, because 
// its GenerateMember property is false.

Note

By default, the Windows Forms Designer assigns the private (Friend in Visual Basic) modifier to container controls like Panel. If your base UserControl or Form has a container control, it will not accept new children in inherited controls and forms. The solution is to change the modifier of the base container control to protected or public.

See Also

Tasks

Walkthrough: Demonstrating Visual Inheritance

How to: Inherit Windows Forms

Reference

Button

Other Resources

Windows Forms Visual Inheritance