BrowsableAttribute Class

A visual designer typically displays in the Properties window those members that either have no browsable attribute or are marked with the BrowsableAttribute constructor's browsable parameter set to true. These members can be modified at design time. Members marked with the BrowsableAttribute constructor's browsable parameter set to false are not appropriate for design-time editing and therefore are not displayed in a visual designer. The default is true.

Note
When you mark a property with Browsable(true), the value of this attribute is set to the constant member Yes. For a property marked with Browsable(false), the value is No. Therefore, when you check the value of this attribute in your code, you must specify the attribute as BrowsableAttribute.Yes or BrowsableAttribute.No.

For more information, see Extending Metadata Using Attributes.

The following example marks a property as browsable.

[Browsable(true)]
 public int MyProperty {
    get {
       // Insert code here.
       return 0;
    }
    set {
       // Insert code here.
    }
 }

The next example shows how to check the value of the BrowsableAttribute for MyProperty. First, the code gets a PropertyDescriptorCollection with all the properties for the object. Next, the code indexes into the PropertyDescriptorCollection to get MyProperty. Then it returns the attributes for this property and saves them in the attributes variable.

The example presents two different ways of checking the value of the BrowsableAttribute. In the second code fragment, the example calls the Equals method. In the last code fragment, the example uses the Browsable property to check the value.

// Gets the attributes for the property.
 AttributeCollection attributes = 
    TypeDescriptor.GetProperties(this)["MyProperty"].Attributes;

 // Checks to see if the value of the BrowsableAttribute is Yes.
 if(attributes[typeof(BrowsableAttribute)].Equals(BrowsableAttribute.Yes)) {
    // Insert code here.
 }

 // This is another way to see whether the property is browsable.
 BrowsableAttribute myAttribute = 
    (BrowsableAttribute)attributes[typeof(BrowsableAttribute)];
 if(myAttribute.Browsable) {
    // Insert code here.
 }

If you marked a class with the BrowsableAttribute, use the following code to check the value.

AttributeCollection attributes = 
    TypeDescriptor.GetAttributes(MyProperty);
 if(attributes[typeof(BrowsableAttribute)].Equals(BrowsableAttribute.Yes)) {
    // Insert code here.
 }

.NET Framework

.NET Framework Client Profile

Windows 7, Windows Vista SP1 or later, Windows XP SP3, Windows XP SP2 x64 Edition, Windows Server 2008 (Server Core not supported), Windows Server 2008 R2 (Server Core supported with SP1 or later), Windows Server 2003 SP2

Reference