R – Upgrading Compact Framework 1 app from VS 2003 to VS 2005 breaks form designer

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I am trying to move a C# Compact Framework 1 application from Visual Studio 2003 to Visual Studio 2005 (no comments please on how outdated all this is :-)). I am now able to compile and run the app in VS 2005 just fine, however when I open one of the forms, the form designer does not show the actual form layout but just some rows of icons, one for each control on the form. I have no idea why, or how to get back the standard form designer view. Does anybody have any experience with that and any hints or tips?

Best Answer

Well some things changed while going from VS2003 to VS2005 one of those things is the way the form designer adds code to your Form class. It creates a separate .designer.cs class and creates a partial class with the same name as you main form class. All the designer generated code now goes in this background class. This is done so that the form designer generated code stays out of your hair.

Now its plausible that the VS2005 designer no longer recognizes the in-file designer code generated by the previous version. You can try to create a new WinForms project and see how it differs from your current project then make appropriate amends to your current project.

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C# – automatically increment the file build version when using Visual Studio

In visual Studio 2008, the following works.

Find the AssemblyInfo.cs file and find these 2 lines:

[assembly: AssemblyVersion("1.0.0.0")]
[assembly: AssemblyFileVersion("1.0.0.0")]

You could try changing this to:

[assembly: AssemblyVersion("1.0.*")]
[assembly: AssemblyFileVersion("1.0.*")]

But this won't give you the desired result, you will end up with a Product Version of 1.0.* and a File Version of 1.0.0.0. Not what you want!

However, if you remove the second of these lines and just have:

[assembly: AssemblyVersion("1.0.*")]

Then the compiler will set the File Version to be equal to the Product Version and you will get your desired result of an automatically increment product and file version which are in sync. E.g. 1.0.3266.92689

C# – visual studio 2005 designer moves controls and resizes Form

I have been working on this problem for most of today and found some interesting things: The main source of the problem seems to be relying on anchoring. If I use docking to position my controls, instead of anchoring, my problems seem to go away. I found a couple of blog posts from 2003(!), which detail how you might use docking instead of anchoring, and explain how anchoring can break the Windows Forms designer. It seems like this problem might be over 7 years old!

Here are the posts:

Best Answer

Related Solutions

C# – automatically increment the file build version when using Visual Studio

C# – visual studio 2005 designer moves controls and resizes Form

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