Replace the built-in toolbars with your own

The default WinFormHtmlEditor toolbar ships with two rows of buttons - about thirty icons in total. In a compact host, such as an inline comment box that only needs bold, italic, and underline, that toolbar dominates the UI. Replace it with a minimal custom set instead of using the built-in toolbars as-is. This page shows how to hide the factory toolbars and build your own from scratch.

Hiding the factory toolbars

Toolbar1, Toolbar2, and ToolbarFooter are exposed as plain ToolStrip references on the editor. Hide all three, typically in Form_Load:

private void CommentForm_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) {     htmlEditor1.Toolbar1.Visible = false;     htmlEditor1.Toolbar2.Visible = false;     htmlEditor1.ToolbarFooter.Visible = false; // hides the WYSIWYG / Source / Preview tabs too }

Private Sub CommentForm_Load(sender As Object, e As EventArgs)     htmlEditor1.Toolbar1.Visible = False     htmlEditor1.Toolbar2.Visible = False     htmlEditor1.ToolbarFooter.Visible = False ' hides the WYSIWYG / Source / Preview tabs too End Sub

The editor is now a bare content area with no toolbar.

Reusing the built-in toolbar buttons

To put only a few buttons, such as Bold, Italic, and Underline, on your own ToolStrip without reimplementing click logic, icon lookup, or undo handling, use ToolbarItemOverrider.ToolbarItems: a strongly-typed accessor that returns the live ToolStripButton instances the editor already configured, with the same icons, the same tooltips (already localized through WinFormHtmlEditor.Language), the same click logic, and the same checked-state toggling.

private void CommentForm_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) {     htmlEditor1.Toolbar1.Visible = false;     htmlEditor1.Toolbar2.Visible = false;     htmlEditor1.ToolbarFooter.Visible = false;     var items = htmlEditor1.ToolbarItemOverrider.ToolbarItems;     customToolStrip.Items.Add(items.Bold);     customToolStrip.Items.Add(items.Italic);     customToolStrip.Items.Add(items.Underline); }

Private Sub CommentForm_Load(sender As Object, e As EventArgs)     htmlEditor1.Toolbar1.Visible = False     htmlEditor1.Toolbar2.Visible = False     htmlEditor1.ToolbarFooter.Visible = False     Dim items = htmlEditor1.ToolbarItemOverrider.ToolbarItems     customToolStrip.Items.Add(items.Bold)     customToolStrip.Items.Add(items.Italic)     customToolStrip.Items.Add(items.Underline) End Sub

What you get for free

Because you are rehosting the editor's own button instances rather than building new ones from scratch, three behaviors keep working without any extra code:

• The editor's undo/redo stack, dirty tracking, and selection state stay correct - the user is still going through the editor's real commands.
• Tooltip localization driven by WinFormHtmlEditor.Language keeps working. Switch the app's language and the tooltips switch with it.
• Pressed/checked state still works. When the caret sits inside bold text, the Bold button shows pressed - the editor toggles Checked on the underlying ToolStripButton regardless of which ToolStrip happens to host it.

Adding more buttons

To expose another built-in command, such as Hyperlink, add one more line: customToolStrip.Items.Add(items.Hyperlink);. The Hyperlink dialog still pops up, the spell-check service still cleans up around the inserted anchor, and the undo stack still records the change.

If a future scenario calls for a UI that is not a ToolStrip at all - a menu, a ribbon, a side-rail of buttons - the matching pattern is in Drive the editor from your own UI.