Visual Studio properties Panel Refreshing/flashing - properties

Not STRICTLY a coding issue, more of Visual Studio Issue.
When creating a new project -any project- when i open the properties panel, it keeps 'flashing'. Even when i drag a button onto a winform/etc, and press F4. It will continue to flash at regular intervals.
Due to this 'refresh', I am unable to rename/change text/etc using the panel, as each time i click into the 'Name' / Text' / etc, it will flash and hence loose focus.
As a workaround, I am currently writing my variable's name into word, copying it, and then trying to quickly paste it into the panel before it refreshes again.
Has anyone else come across this issue, or have been able to solve this?
Cheers

Related

How to make form appear in all desktops of Windows 10 in VB.Net?

I need to make a form visible even when I switch desktop on Windows 10 (by pressing Ctrl-Windows-Arrow) if possible, without any 2nd party lib
You can create multiple desktops by pressing Windows-Tab and clicking the + on the bottom-right corner.
Normally, a form only appears in the original desktop it was shown, and can be dragged to another desktop, but won't appear in multiples at the same time.
I know it's possible, because the splash forms of some applications do this. (Ex: Word, Excel)
I searched all over the web, but couldn't find a solution.
EDIT: Another app that I know that does this is the Task Manager, when you mark the "Always Show" checkbox.
This may be of some help. You have to dive into the world of AutoHotKey but this will solve your issues I'm pretty sure:
https://superuser.com/questions/950960/pin-applications-to-multiple-desktops-in-windows-10
Set your form's topmost property to true? Have you tried that?

why does Visual Studio modify "Windows Form Designer generated code" on designer open?

When working w/ a WinForm project in VS.NET 2015, our team has noticed that the mere act of opening a .VB form in the designer view (default action when double-clicking the file in Solution Explorer) will cause VS to modify many object properties in the "Windows Form Designer generated code" section of the actual .VB code-behind. It seems to be limited to the .Size and .Location properties for sometimes dozens or more of UI objects, always changing their X,Y coords just slightly.
Mind you we don't perform any action to drive this -- simply open the file (obtained from source-control and residing in the local solution/project) in VS.NET's form designer by double-clicking the file in Solution Explorer, and bam -- it has the "unsaved" asterisk and if you save it and compare to source control version you can see the modifications already made.
I couldn't find much on this. Is this a known behavior? Any idea why it does this? Kind of reminds me of the old days w/ MS FrontPage's designer view, and even the early days of ASP.NET in VS which would apply some HTML changes if you opened a WebForm in designer view, until they gave the option to disable that on a later release.
thanks for any input.
UPDATE: this appears to be continuing even with myself as the only editor of the .VB form in designer. various form elements are shifting their position very slightly. Here's a diff screenshot between my last check in and today, and I know I'm the only one editing:
...there are many like that. Always these two properties, always just a few pixels difference.
I don't have an specific answer for this, but since this drove us crazy a bit a few months ago with my team, while working on a WinForms project, I am glad to share my experience!
Every time someone opened any form on VS2015, it would ask other people who has the same solution open at that time to reload the code. We first thought the third party controls (at that time it was both DevExpress and Infragistics) we are using were re-generated on designed initialization - because they tend to do that a lot but then we realised this kept happening on forms that only contains .NET controls.
Now the funny part. This only happened to us on VS2015. We were using VS2013 before, without this annoying problem.
Long story short, then we realized the screens we are using have different DPIs, just like Cody Gray said. I am not absolutely sure if this was the reason, but since we started using TFS, obviously we don't have the problem anymore... Hope this helps somehow lol.

Executable Buttons Not Displaying

I created a VB.Net application with a target .NET Framework of 4.5. The application runs fine on my computer (or any system with Visual Studio installed). But when I try to run the exe generated from the build, the application loads, but the buttons are not displaying. There is an outline where the button is, and you can actually click the button to perform the action just fine. I assume this has something to do with a reference problem, but I really don't know for sure. They are just standard Windows form buttons. No images attached.
So I figured out the solution, but not necessarily the problem. The button had a BackColor property set to Black which is the same color as the form. For some reason, on certain machines this caused the button and the form to blend together. Changing the button BackColor to something different (such as Control grey) worked just fine.

No taskbar icon for application

So I have this application I have made in VB. The problem is that when I start it it does not show up in my taskbar. It only shows up if I maximize another window infront of it and then minimize it. Also it has the basic VB icon even though I changed the icon in the properties.
There is no relevant code for this issue.
I found the same thing; no icon was showing in the taskbar. I had to go into Task Manager and Switch To the program to get it to show. I could ' maximize another window in front of it and then minimize it as well.'
Found the solution that worked for me. The 'Main' form did not have anything in the 'text' property because I was doing that and a Ver number in the program. As soon as I put text into the 'text' property, it started working. The problem was only with VB2015. Worked fine in VB2010.

How to resolve Windows Forms designer issue - controls move on debug?

Is there a reason / fix for this weird designer issue (at least, I think it's related to the designer), whereby the controls on the form do not appear as they do in the design window when I debug the application..!
Please see the following two screenshots to demonstrate the problem (note: I have blacked out some of the content of the form, this is not the problem):
Picture 1: Showing how the form appears in the designer view
Picture 2: Showing how the form appears in debug mode
You can clearly see that some of the buttons have moved position on the form.
Note: At first glance, this may appear like a duplicate of: Windows Forms Designer destroys form layout. However, I have not installed any additional tools or components. This is simply a standard "vanilla" build of Visual Studio 2012 on Windows 7 32-bit.
I've also come across this question: UI Controls Overlapping & Fonts Issue in Windows Forms Application. However, I am not using "large fonts", nor am I using any non-standard fonts on my controls (all label and button text is left as default). Still, I can see how this would affect the control positions and will do some more checks in this area.
There's nothing happening within the form's Load method.
I'm also using TFS 2012.
What could be causing this? Is there anything I can do to fix it?
EDIT: I've removed the font property for each label and button control, allowing the system to set the default value. Still no change. Interestingly, if I open the form in design mode, then save it, then close it, then open it again, the buttons have moved... If I do this a few times, the buttons migrate until they're off the form.
OK, I've found the answer, after a bit more fiddling. It seems to be related to the Anchor property on the controls. I made a bunch of changes, testing between each change to see if there was any difference. When I selected all the controls and set the Anchor property to Top, Left, this solved the issue.
I hope this helps someone else at some point!