Visual Studio: Design a UserControl class that derives from an abstract base class

Question

I want to have an abstract base class for some of my custom UserControl's. The reason is obvious: they share some common properties and methods (a basic implementation of some elements of an interface actually), and I want to implement them only once.

I have done this by defining my abstract base class:

public abstract class ViewBase : UserControl, ISomeInterface

Then I went to implement one of my views, as usual, with the designer:

public partial class SpecialView : UserControl //all OK

Up to here all is fine. Now I replace the derivation of my SpecialView class with the abstract base class:

public partial class SpecialView : ViewBase //disrupts the designer

Now, the designer in Visual Studio 2008 won't work anymore, stating: The designer must create an instance of type 'ViewBase' but it cannot because the type is declared as abstract.

How can I circumvent this? I just do not want to have the same code copied for all those views.

Info: there is a question question with virtual methods, instead of abstract classes, but there is no suitable solution for me.

Answer 1

Instead of using abstract class, you can mark the functions virtual and override them in the inheriting classes