Hi,

I have a screen that will need multiple combo boxes, and they will all need the same special stuff, so I am trying to make my own control that inherits from UltraComboEditor that I can reuse.

In addition to the standard drop-down functionality, I will need an extra drop-down button that drops down an UltraGrid for quick-summary purposes.  (Actually, I will need three buttons, but I imagine the process is the same for the second two, so I'm starting with one.)

My strategy is to have member variables for the button (DropDownButtonEditor '_button') and the grid (UltraGrid '_grid').  In the constructor of this TestComboEditor class, I add the button to the class's ButtonsRight collection, set some Appearance properties (add an image), and set the Control property of _button to be the grid.  I want to use the BeforeDropDown event to retrieve and set the DataSource for the grid.

The first problem I have is that there are two editor buttons being shown in addition to the standard drop-down button.  I thought maybe a button was being added to the collection twice, so in the constructor of TestComboEditor , I surrounded the code that adds the _button to the ButtonsRight collection with 'if (!this.DesignMode).  But that led to a 'Key already exists' exception in the constructor when the _button was being added to the ButtonsRight collection--apparently, just placing the TestComboEditor  control on the form in the screen designer added a new DropDownEditorButton and added it to the ButtonsRight collection.  So I changed the conditional around to only add the button if in DesignMode, and then I get nothing.

Now the problem is that I can't get it to work without throwing the 'Key already exists' exception.  I really don't know what is going on.  Any advice?  I've attached the code I'm using for the TestComboEditor class.

Thanks,

J

Update:  You can get the 'Key already exists' error in VS directly--add the control to a screen and save, close the screen, and then open back up in the designer.