Develop Reference

Winforms UI Dynamically Displaying Parts

I came across a tutorial and some example code for an audio converter. You select the format you want to convert to from a drop down, and when you do all sorts of options appear in a previously blank area, different options based on the format you choose. It's called Audio Converter .NET and is from same author as Audio CD Ripper .NET. I can't find the tutorial, but here is a screenshot.
See how on the right there is extra controls that are not on the left. I was experimenting trying to add another category. I added it to the dropdown, but am unsure how to make it so certain fields come up when it is selected.
I understand that they create those controls for those items, but I don't see how they call the correct one when the combo box selects something. I see controls are created, but if I try to duplicate the controls into another entry in the combo box they don't show up for either the new or old one I was duplicating from.
What's the best way to go about achieving something like this?
Thanks

The easiest way is to create the controls needed for every option in the dropdown inside a panel, and simply turn it's visibility property from false to true whenever it's corresponding option is selected using the combobox's SelectedIndexChanged event handler. (And don't forget to turn the current visible panel's visibility to false)

Custom WinForm ListBox with user-input content

I have a need to provide as options multiple objects from a particular data set, and populate a list so that an end-user can select, none,some, all, or all + possibly missing data fields (user-input).
I originally planned to extend a System.Windows.Forms.ListView to include a whitespace item that contained a checkmark, then specially handle the case where a user had clicked this blank line item.
I would like the ability to remove these user-input line items if possible. I do not have to use a System.Windows.Forms.ListView, but its design seems to best-fit this particular use.
Is there a control with this functionality already , or an attribute of the System.Windows.Forms.ListView I have missed that may handle these situtations?
---Update---
ListBox is changed to System.Windows.Forms.ListView

DataGrid sounds like it would be a good fit; otherwise I'd suggest looking at 3rd party controls.

WinForms designer

I have a large number of forms with a lot of controls on them and i need to do specific actions with certain groups of controls. Is it possible to select all elements with the same type using vs winforms designer? or using other instruments?
It's not a problem when i'm using custom controls where i can implement my own controlDesigner and override Verbs property (for example), but unfortunately most of them are common.

"I need to do specific actions with certain groups of controls" is pretty vague. If you are trying to change or insert a property to controls with a specific name or property value, you could try a global search and replace of the form.designer.cs files. Depending on what you're changing, this will be used by, overwritten by, or completely break the designer.
If you want a better answer you will have to describe what you're trying to do.

QuickWatch-like control for .NET WinForms?

Visual Studio QuickWatch window has a hierarchical property grid control. Is a control like that available somewhere?
The default property grid control doesn't seem to work for me as it requires the objects to have an ExpandableConverter attribute to work the way I want. Although, if any of you know a way to turn the property grid into a QuickWatch-like control it would also be accepted.
Thanks.

It is very spread type of control. Each Library-of-Controls company created at least one.
http://images.google.com.ua/images?q=tree%20like%20grid

Here you have two samples:
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/grid/PropertyGridExWinForms.aspx
http://www.howtocode.net/software-development/c/propertygrid-utilities

I don't think so, its something you would have to create your self.
looks like it wouldn't be to difficult, I think its DataGridView where the first column is a custom cell that when clicked does a hit test to see if its hit a node glyph.
But i could be wrong.

Dynamic top down list of controls in WindowsForms and C#?

In our project, SharpWired, we're trying to create a download component similar to the download windows in Firefox or Safari. That is, one single top down list of downloads which are custom controls containing progress bars, buttons and what not.
The requirements are that there should be one single list, with one element on each row. Each element must be a custom control. The whole list should be dynamically re-sizable, so that when you make it longer / shorter the list adds a scroll bar when needed and when you make it thinner / wider the custom controls should resize to the width of the list.
We've tried using a FlowLayoutPanel but haven't gotten resizing to work the way we want to. Preferably we should only have to set anchoring of the custom controls to Left & Right. We've also thought about using a TableLayoutPanel but found adding rows dynamically to be a too big overhead so far.
This must be quite a common use case, and it seems a bit weird to me that the FlowLayoutPanel has no intuitive way of doing this. Has anyone done something similar or have tips or tricks to get us under way?
Cheers!
/Adam

If you don't want to use databinding (via the DataRepeater control, as mentioned above), you could use a regular Panel control and set its AutoScroll property to true (to enable scrollbars).
Then, you could manually add your custom controls, and set the Dock property of each one to Top.

.NET 3.5 SP1 introduced a DataRepeater Windows Forms control which sounds like it'd do what you want. Bind it to the list of "downloads" (or whatever your list represents) and customize each item panel to include the controls you need.