Visual Studio Integration Tip - Control Designers

Visual Studio Integration Tip - Control Designers

Posted on December 03, 2013 0 Comments

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It’s no surprise that people are more likely to use something when it looks nice and is easy to navigate. Sitefinity Thunder makes it simple to transform cryptic and confusing widgets into ones that users will actually enjoy well...using. First, let’s take a quick look at the “cryptic and confusing” way.

Property editors


Just by registering widgets in the Sitefinity toolbox, they get set up with this not so pretty, but functional property editor.

Property Editor

These allow users to modify all the public properties that a widget exposes. In this example, the user needs to access only one of the properties…”Message”. The rest are just potential areas for confusion and should be hidden. That’s where control designers come in.

Control designers


Control designers let users modify widget properties that will be useful to them in a friendly, clutter free interface.

Control Designer

All the other properties are still available in the “Advanced” view though so more advanced users still have access to them.

How Sitefinity Thunder Helps


Sitefinity Thunder comes with a wizard to help you create control designers for your existing widgets.

Thunder Designer Wizard 1

All you have to do is select the properties you want your users to have immediate access to and Thunder takes care of the rest!

Thunder Designer Wizard 2


Integrating Sitefinity and Visual Studio with Thunder makes it possible to quickly generate code for control designers. These give your custom widgets that “native” look and feel which means happier users…and dare I say, repeat business. Pretty cool for a free tool, right?

Tim Williamson

View all posts from Tim Williamson on the Progress blog. Connect with us about all things application development and deployment, data integration and digital business.

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