Component Dropper is a component that resides in the toolbox of VS.NET and enables you to choose a component (controls, datasets, providers, components, etc.) from the assemblies that are referenced in the current project.

In Visual Studio .NET you can auto populate the controls in the toolbox by setting the AutoToolboxPopulate property to true in menu Tools -> Options -> Windows Forms Designer.

Component Dropper is an alternative way for dropping a component on the designer surface. It gives you a dialog with all the components that reside in the assemblies that are referenced in the current project. This means that it is not limited to the assemblies that reside in the current solution. This way you can easily browse and search throughout the assemblies and controls, this is very handy if you have bunch of assemblies and controls. There is never a need to refresh the toolbox, because it dynamically searches throughout the references in the current project.

Download: ComponentDropper v0.9 (35.04 KB)

There is also a demo (1.11 Mb) that illustrates the use of Component Dropper. Note that the demo uses an older version of Component Dropper, namely version 0.5, and it's not an VS add-in anymore.

If after installation you don't see the component dropper appearing in the toolbox, you can simply drag-and-drop the IStaySharp.RazorToolbox.dll to the toolbox.
Any suggestions or remarks are welcome!

I has been a while that I released a new version of ComponentDropper and I am going to release a new update very soon. I received positive feedback, and I am planning to add some new features and certainly to provide an installer for the add-in. Please leave a comment if you have any suggestions about ComponentDropper. 

Today I released an add-in for Visual Studio .NET 2005 that allows you to drag components onto the designer surface. It's called ComponentDropper and you can even watch a movie to know what it does and how to use it.

A very good tool for screen capturing is Windows Media Encoder. It's from Microsoft and you can download it, if you have a legal version of Windows XP.

Windows Media Encoder 9 Series is a powerful tool for content producers who want to capture audio and video content using the many innovations in Windows Media 9 Series including high-quality multichannel sound, high-definition video quality, support for mixed-mode voice and music content, and more.

RazorToolbox is a set of utilities/tools in the form of addins, macros, components, etc. for Visual Studio.NET. In the initial release of RazorToolbox we have ComponentDropper.

In .NET you can easily build components (= also controls), but in order to use them on your designer surface you have to add them in the toolbox of Visual Studio.NET. But there are some problems. For example if you are writing an exe-application and added some components in the exe-project, you cannot add them to the toolbox, because the toolbox only accepts DLLs. Another issue is when you are developing a set of components in a control library, you will have to refresh the toolbox for each component you added in the library, it is not automatically refreshed and is time-consuming. Besides that there are some controls in .NET that are not displayed in the toolbox, for example the PropertyGrid.

ComponentDropper allows you to drop a component on the designer surface from a set of assemblies. For example if you are writing an exe-application and added a usercontrol named UserControl1 like the screennshot below:

Take the ComponentDropper from the toolbox and drag it over the form where you want to drop UserControl1. You get something like:

This list gives the set of components that reside in the current project and the assemblies that are referenced in the project. There you can double-click on UserControl1 and it's added to the form.

There are some settings, like you can first build the project before ComponentDropper search for components in the current project. Also you can indicate that ComponentDropper searches in the list of references in the current project. A list of references can be excluded through expressions, for example: System.*.

Download:RazorToolbox.zip (223,59 KB)

Any feedback and comments are greatly appreciated!