In order for Visual Studio and Visual Web Developer to display the Web Connection controls with all of the custom properties that are specific to the framework you'll end up using the WebConnectionWebControls.dll in your project and drop it onto the toolbar.

Web Connection ships with the source code of these .NET controls, which are mere shells that implement the appropriate properties and render the interface into the designer to match. These controls are not used at runtime - they are merely a design time feature of the Web Connection framework in order to provide Toolbox and Intellisense support.

The source code and project file for the WebConnectionWebControls.dll can be found in:

<wconnectInstallDir>\VisualStudio\WebConnectionWebControls

Customizing or overriding the Controls

Since you get the source code you can review of how these controls are set up and how they render themselves. One of the really cool aspects of using Visual Studio for control editing is that you can effectively create a custom renderer and even full designers (if you're willing to dig into some .NET code). The base control implementations consist mainly of C# Property implementations, plus Rendering for a few of the controls like the DataGrid, and Repeater etc.

You can extend these controls, or subclass them to create custom controls that map to your own Web Connection Controls you might create. Of course you can also create new controls completely from scratch. To subclass we recommend that you create a new .NET Class project and then subclass either any stock .NET controls or one of the Web Connection controls ( you can use the source code provided as a reference ). We'll be updating this DLL occasionally with updates and you'll want to make sure that our changes don't override yours.

Adding the project to your Web Project in VS.NET

While working in Visual Studio I like to work with the source code for the Web Controls available. This allows making changes to the controls quickly for one. You can simply recompile the control project to immediately update the controls. You also get the most current version of the controls in your project - by adding the project to your Web project and then Adding a Reference to the Control project you can use a single copy of the DLL in all of your projects that's always up to date and stays up to date.

Another bonus is that control based controls also drops onto the Toolbox automatically without requiring the tedious steps to register a DLL on the Toolbox and update it everytime you add a control. If you add a new control - the new control immediately shows up on the toolbox.

If you plan on building custom controls I highly recommend this approach.

To configure your project with the Web Connection Web Controls project:

• Go into Solution Explorer

• Click Add Existing Project
  

• Find the project in the <wconnectInstallDir>\VisualStudio\WebConnectionWebControls
  (or your own project) and add it to the solution.
  

• Now right click on the WebLog Web project and select Add Reference

• Go to the Existing and select Projects and select WebConnectionWebControls (or your own)
  
  

And you're off. You can now make changes to the Web Control project and then right click on the control project and Build to recompile that project. Make sure you build only the Web Control project as the Web Site compilation will likely fail because there will be FoxPro code in pages that the ASP.NET compiler cannot compile. We don't care about ASP.NET compilation after all - the code will be compiled by the Web Connection Server.