Design-time configuration: Smart Tag and the Properties window

The design-time experience in one minute

When you drop WinFormHtmlEditor onto a form you configure it at design time in two places: the Smart Tag (a quick panel for the most-used settings) and the standard Properties window. This page explains what the Smart Tag offers, why it shows up only on some target frameworks, and why you never actually lose a setting because of that.

One thing the design surface does not do is let you add toolbar buttons -- the toolbars are factory-built and custom buttons are added in code. That is a separate topic; see Add a custom button to the built-in toolbar in the Toolbar Customization section.

What the Smart Tag is and what it exposes

The Smart Tag is the small arrow glyph that appears on the control in the Visual Studio designer. It is a DesignerActionList that auto-shows when you drop the control, and it surfaces the settings developers change most often, grouped under Appearance, Behavior, Value and Help:

It is a shortcut, not a separate feature: every item maps to an ordinary public property on the control (or, for the Help entries, just opens a web page).

Smart Tag on .NET Framework only -- and why nothing is lost on modern .NET

Stated plainly:

• If your host application targets .NET Framework (net45 / net472 / net48), the Smart Tag glyph appears and auto-shows when you drop the control.
• If your host application targets modern .NET (.NET 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10), the WinForms designer runs out of process and does not render the Smart Tag glyph.

You do not lose anything. Every entry on the Smart Tag is a normal public property carrying [Category] and [Description] attributes, so on every target framework you set exactly the same things from the standard Properties window at design time, or from code at runtime. The Smart Tag is a convenience, not the only door in -- its absence on modern .NET is cosmetic, not functional.

Configuring the control without the Smart Tag

Select the control on the form and use the Properties window -- the same Language, Editor Mode, Default HTML Type, Enter Key Response, spell-check and table options listed above are all there, with the same categories and descriptions. Anything you can set at design time you can also set in code:

using SpiceLogic.HtmlEditor.WinForms;
using SpiceLogic.HtmlEditor.Resources.Localization;

htmlEditor1.Language = EditorLanguage.German;
htmlEditor1.Options.EnterKeyResponse = EnterKeyResponses.Linebreak;

Adding toolbar buttons is its own task and is always done in code (the toolbars are factory-built). See Add a custom button to the built-in toolbar in the Toolbar Customization section.

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