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Properties Window and Property Pages

The Visual Studio Properties window is a universal property browser for COM and COM+ components and supports all Visual Studio products. The Properties window works with ITypeInfo type information and COM+ metadata to list the design-time properties for the currently selected object in any other window in the integrated development environment (IDE).

The Properties window, which can be opened by pressing F4 on the keyboard, or selecting Properties Window on the View menu, is used to view and edit configuration-independent, design-time properties and events of selected objects. Configuration-dependent properties, associated with solutions and projects, are displayed on Property Pages. For more information, see Project Properties, Managing Configuration Options, and Item Management in Projects.

Properties window

Properties Window Overview

This section provides detailed information that relates to the individual areas of the Properties window and the interfaces that you must implement and call to populate the window.

In This Section

  • Project Types
    Discusses projects as the building blocks of the Visual Studio IDE.

  • Building Applications in Visual Studio
    Describes how you can use the Visual Studio Platform for continuously testing and debugging applications as you build them.

  • HTML Document Properties, Properties Window
    Provides instructions for editing an HTML document directly from the Properties window, and provides a table detailing the fields in an HTML document in the Properties window.

  • IDispatch
    Describes the IDispatch interface, which was first designed to support automation, providing a late-bound mechanism to access and retrieve information about the methods and properties of an object.

  • Introduction to Dynamic Properties (Visual Studio)
    Provides an overview of dynamic properties that let you configure your application so that property values are stored in an external configuration file instead of the application's compiled code.

  • Projects as Containers
    Describes the role of the project as a container in a solution to logically manage, build, and debug the items that make up your application.

  • Project Properties
    Describes how the project manages settings that let you control properties that apply to the whole project and also properties that are limited to certain build configurations of the project.

  • Solution and Project Basics
    Explains how Visual Studio efficiently manages the items such as references, data connections, folders, and files that are required by your development effort through solutions and projects.

  • User Interfaces
    Explains how to use Visual Studio services to create UI elements that match the rest of Visual Studio.