Visual Studio Integration Tip - Control Designers

It’s no surprise that people are more likely to use something when it looks nice and is easy to navigate. Sitefinity Thunder makes it simple to transform cryptic and confusing widgets into ones that users will actually enjoy well...using. First, let’s take a quick look at the “cryptic and confusing” way.

Property editors

Just by registering widgets in the Sitefinity toolbox, they get set up with this not so pretty, but functional property editor.



These allow users to modify all the public properties that a widget exposes. In this example, the user needs to access only one of the properties…”Message”. The rest are just potential areas for confusion and should be hidden. That’s where control designers come in.

Control designers

Control designers let users modify widget properties that will be useful to them in a friendly, clutter free interface.



All the other properties are still available in the “Advanced” view though so more advanced users still have access to them.

How Sitefinity Thunder Helps

Sitefinity Thunder comes with a wizard to help you create control designers for your existing widgets.



All you have to do is select the properties you want your users to have immediate access to and Thunder takes care of the rest!




Integrating Sitefinity and Visual Studio with Thunder makes it possible to quickly generate code for control designers. These give your custom widgets that “native” look and feel which means happier users…and dare I say, repeat business. Pretty cool for a free tool, right?