Design Time
Telerik UI for WinForms supports the Visual Studio .NET Core WinForms designer. All of the Telerik designers are migrated and the controls are populated in the toolbox. We have special control designers, action lists, property builders and editors achieving a design time experience similar to the one seen on the full .NET framework.
In R2 2022 we added support for:
- RadItem glyphs
- RadItem action lists
- RadItem context menus
- RadItem default event generation
- Inline editing
- Menus and drop-downs
- Form conversion
- F1 help integration
- Layout control, Rotator and Carousel implementations
Now, we have a feature parity with the .NET Framework designer. It is highly recommended using Visual Studio 2022.
Figure 1: RadGridView .NET Core Designer
Requirements
The design time assemblies in .NET Core are resolved via the installed in the project NuGet packages. In order use the new designers, please make sure that the following requirements are met:
-
Visual Studio 2022 v17.0 and newer or Visual Studio 2019 v16.8 and newer
- The VS2022 and VS2019 Preview versions are also supported.
Check the compatibility table below with details about matching Telerik and Visual Studio versions.
- Don’t forget to enable the designer in Tools > Options > Environment > Preview Features.
-
Telerik UI for WinForms NuGet installed in the project: Install using NuGet Packages
- Telerik UI for Winforms R3 2020 and newer.
Even though you may have an installation of the Telerik UI for WinForms suite with the correct version according to the compatibility table below, it is not enough to load the designer. It requires installing the appropriate Telerik UI for WinForms NuGet package.
Target .NET Core 3.1/.NET 5+ in your project: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/standard/frameworks#supported-target-frameworks
Our designers target a specific version of the WinForms Designer SDK and this SDK is also inserted into Visual Studio. Sometimes there might be breaking changes in the WinForms Designer SDK and as it is part of Visual Studio itself this will break our designers. As things are dynamically changing one needs to pay attention of the Telerik NuGet version and the Visual Studio version. The table below is a mapping between the Telerik and the Visual Studio versions.
The latest Telerik UI for WinForms NuGets should be supported in the latest VS2022 and VS2019 releases. Below is a compatiblity table with our previous versions and a matching Visual Studio release. As it is not needed anymore, this table will no longer be updated.
| Telerik NuGet Version | Visual Studio Version |
|---|---|
| R2 2022 v2022.2.510 | VS2022: v17.1.+; v17.3.0 Preview 1; VS2019: v16.11.+ |
| Hotfix v2022.1.329-hotfix | VS2022: v17.0.+; v17.2.0 Preview 2; VS2019: v16.11.+ |
| Hotfix v2022.1.322-hotfix | VS2022: v17.0.+; v17.2.0 Preview 2; VS2019: v16.11.+ |
| R1 2022 SP1 v2022.1.222 | VS2022 v17.0.+; VS2019 v16.11.+ |
| R1 2022 v2022.1.118 | VS2022 v17.0.+; VS2019 v16.11.+ |
| Hotfix v2021.3.1213-hotfix | VS2022: v17.0.+; v17.1.0 Preview 1.1; VS2019: v16.11.+; v16.11.7 Preview 1.0 |
| R3 2021 SP2 v2021.3.1123 | VS2022: v17.0.+; v17.1.0 Preview 1.1; VS2019: v16.11.+; v16.11.7 Preview 1.0 |
| R3 2021 SP1 v2021.3.1109 | VS2022: v17.0.+; v17.1 Preview 1; VS2019: v16.11.+; v16.11 Preview 1 |
| Hotfix v2021.3.1019-hotfix | VS2022 v17.0 Preview 5, 6 & 7 |
| Hotfix v2021.3.927-hotfix | VS2022 v17.0 Preview 4 |
| R3 2021 v2021.3.914 | VS2019 v16.11.+; VS2019 v16.11 Preview |
| Hotfix v2021.2.802-hotfix | VS2019 v16.11.+; VS2019 v16.11 Preview 4; VS2022 v17.0 Preview 2 |
| Hotfix v2021.2.712-hotfix | VS2019 v16.11.+; VS2019 v16.11 Preview 1 & 2; VS2022 v17.0 Preview 2 |
| R2 2021 SP1 v2021.2.615 | VS2019 v16.10.+; VS2019 v16.11 Preview 1 & 2; VS2022 v17.0 Preview 1 |
| Hotfix v2021.2.607-hotfix | VS2019 v16.10.+; VS2019 v16.11 Preview 1 |
| R2 2021 v2021.2.511 | VS2019 v16.9.+; VS2019 v16.9 Preview 2 to v16.10 Preview 1 |
| Hotfix v2021.1.329-hotfix | VS2019 v16.9.+; VS2019 v16.9 Preview 2 to v16.10 Preview 1 |
| R1 2021 SP3 v2021.1.326 | VS2019 v16.9.+; VS2019 v16.9 Preview 2 to v16.10 Preview 1 |
| R1 2021 SP2 v2021.1.223 | VS2019 v16.9.+; VS2019 v16.9 Preview 2 to v16.10 Preview 1 |
| R1 2021 SP1 v2021.1.204 | VS2019 v16.9.+ Preview 2 or newer |
| R1 2021 v2021.1.122 | VS2019 v16.9 Preview 2 or newer |
| Hotfix v2020.3.1215-hotfix | VS2019 v16.9 Preview 2 |
| Hotfix v2020.3.1116-hotfix | VS2019 v16.9 Preview 1 |
| R3 2020 SP1 v2020.3.1020 | VS2019 v16.8.+; VS2019 v16.8 Preview 4 |
| R3 2020 v2020.3.915 | VS2019 v16.8 Preview 3 |
The toolbox is populated from the UI controls added to the referenced NuGet package/s.
As the AllControls package contains all UI controls and themes it should not be installed in projects having other packages containing the UI controls (e.g. UI.for.WinForms.Common etc.) or the UI.for.WinForms.Themes package. Either use the AllControls package or the packages of the separate controls and the themes.
Tips and Tricks
Note that the design-time assemblies are resolved from the installed NuGet packages by the new Microsoft SDK which is part of Visual Studio. It is recommended to close all the opened designers when you are about to install or update our NuGets. The same is also true when rebuilding the project. Please have in mind that if you have a designer opened and you rebuild the project, this will kill the .NET Core process hosting the design server, ultimately this will lead to restarting the design surface by starting a new server process. If your form has a complex designer this may slow down Visual Studio so you may consider closing the designers before rebuilding the application.
The new architecture is described in more details in our New Telerik UI for WinForms Designers for .NET Core and .NET 5.0 blog.