: Developers often report that controls become "invisible" or non-selectable in the design view after moving projects between machines or upgrading Visual Studio versions.
Have you used DotNetBar with Visual Studio 2022? Share your experience in the developer forums—or contact DevComponents support for a 30-day trial license.
DevComponents DotNetBar remains a relevant and powerful solution for .NET developers, even with the rise of WPF and MAUI. For organizations with large Windows Forms codebases, it provides a lifeline to modernize the user interface without a complete rewrite.
Enhancing Visual Studio 2022 User Interface Development: An Analysis of DevComponents.DotNetBar devcomponents dotnetbar visual studio 2022
Visual Studio's Windows Forms Designer must load component designers into its own process memory. Because DotNetBar’s core design-time assemblies ( DevComponents.DotNetBar.Design.dll ) were compiled strictly for 32-bit environments, Visual Studio 2022 cannot natively load them into its 64-bit designer process.
Right-click Toolbox -> Choose Items -> Browse to DevComponents.DotNetBar2.dll .
| Alternative | Weakness in VS 2022 | |-------------|----------------------| | Telerik UI for WinForms | Heavier, slower design-time, higher learning curve | | Syncfusion | Expensive, requires complex assembly management | | Infragistics | Poor 64-bit designer support (as of 2024) | | Native WinForms Controls | Dated look, no ribbon or Metro tiles | : Developers often report that controls become "invisible"
To integrate DevComponents DotNetBar into Visual Studio 2022, follow these steps to manually add the components, as official support for DotNetBar ended with older versions of Visual Studio Manually Adding DotNetBar to Visual Studio 2022
A complete, professional Ribbon interface similar to Microsoft Office.
Copy DevComponents.DotNetBar.Design.dll to your project's bin/Debug or lib folder to avoid missing design-time resources. Previous versions ran as 32-bit processes.
If you have the original MSI installer for your licensed version of DotNetBar (e.g., version 14.1), run it. The installer typically places the required dynamic-link libraries (DLLs) into the Global Assembly Cache (GAC) or a local installation directory, usually located at: C:\Program Files (x86)\DevComponents\DotNetBar For Windows Forms\
Visual Studio 2022 is the first fully 64-bit (x64) version of the IDE. Previous versions were 32-bit (x86).
Select the RibbonControl . In its smart tag panel or properties, you can add new "Tabs". For each RibbonTab , you can add RibbonPanel containers, and within those panels, you can place various controls like RibbonButton , RibbonCheckBox , and RibbonComboBox .
Consider a scenario where an enterprise application written in .NET Framework 4.8 is being upgraded to run on Visual Studio 2022.
Visual Studio 2022 runs as a 64-bit process ( devenv.exe ). Previous versions ran as 32-bit processes.