SandDock Designer Support

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SandDock carries more designer support to help you get started quickly and easily than any other product of its kind. There is no collection editor, no separate designer interface to help configure the layout. The SandDock components integrate seamlessly in to the existing Windows Forms designers, taking advantage of existing layout and serialization support.

Docking windows at design time works in exactly the same way as it does at runtime - to move a window from one side of the form to another, for example, you need only to drag it by its tab. All docking operations fully support Undo and Redo, and the designer verbs shown in the propertygrid show possible docking commands intuitively.

Introduced with SandDock 2.0 is the ability to design dockable windows and tabbed documents ahead of time. SandDock integrates with the Visual Studio template system to add User Dockable Window and User Tabbed Document to the list of templates. Just like a UserControl, you can design your dockable window in a standalone state to better promote encapsulation.

When you design windows like this, SandDock adds them to a special tab on your toolbox. You can then double-click these items when designing a form and your designed class will be opened as a dockable window in the form.

The image below shows a form with a fresh SandDockManager dropped on it. By default a dockable window is created on the right-hand edge of the form, and the image shows the developer moving that window to the left-hand edge.

The same level of support applies with tabbed documents. When adding documents it is possible to split and resize them at design time in just the same way it is possible at runtime.