Some features are small and to the point. New features are being added all the time. The feature in this blog is short and to the point and it is a design time feature, so I combined it with another feature.
Suppose you have a TextEdit control on a form and you set the TextEdit.Properties.Mask to ‘f’ for Full date/time (short time) using the Mask Editor (see Figure 1). You now also have the design time capability—a new feature in volume 3—of changing the actual design control while keeping layout and location the same. For example, to change the TextEdit control to a DateEdit control at design time click the TextEdit’s smart tags menu, click Change editor type (see Figure 2). All control types can be changed this way and you get to avoid the headache of reconstructing your very carefully constructed layout.
Figure 1: The Mask Editor let’s you pick from pre-defined edit masks for the TextEdit control.
Figure 2: Change control types in place on the fly at design time.