Real Hint in TextBox Visual Studio C#

Question

I'm currently making a Windows Forms Application on Visual Studio in C# and I'm trying to find a way to have a real hint.

I've found a lot of answers online on how to have some text preset there, Some examples even show how to grey out the text to look like a placeholder, but that's not what I'm looking for.

I want a grayed out text that you don't have to backspace to type something there. So I want it to behave like an HTML placeholder like the "Search Q&A" search bar on stack Overflow.

Is there an easy way to do this, like configuring a property of the textbox in the designer on Visual Studio?

Answer 1

This might be the ugliest code but I think you can improve it.

This following class is merely an extension of the standard TextBox

 class PHTextBox : System.Windows.Forms.TextBox
    {
        System.Drawing.Color DefaultColor; 
        public string PlaceHolderText {get;set;}
        public PHTextBox(string placeholdertext)
        {
            // get default color of text
           DefaultColor = this.ForeColor;
            // Add event handler for when the control gets focus
            this.GotFocus += (object sender, EventArgs e) => 
            {
                this.Text = String.Empty;
                this.ForeColor = DefaultColor;
            };

            // add event handling when focus is lost
            this.LostFocus += (Object sender, EventArgs e) => {
                if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(this.Text) || this.Text == PlaceHolderText)
                {
                    this.ForeColor = System.Drawing.Color.Gray;
                    this.Text = PlaceHolderText;
                }
                else
                {
                    this.ForeColor = DefaultColor;
                }
            };



            if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(placeholdertext))
            {
                // change style   
                this.ForeColor = System.Drawing.Color.Gray;
                // Add text
                PlaceHolderText = placeholdertext;
                this.Text = placeholdertext;
            }



        }


    }

Copy/paste to new cs file entitled PHTextBox.cs.

Go to your graphic designer and add a TextBox. Go to the designer and change the instiantion line for the textbox as follow:

Now compile but before you do, just make sure the textbox is not the first element to get the focus. Add button for that matter.