Dynamic AutoComplete Tool and Visual Studio .NET 2005

The Visual Studio .NET 2005 and .NET Framework 2.0 brings autocomplete to the mainstream WinForms development. In .NET Framework 2.0, the standard WinForms TextBox and ComboBox controls have additional AutoComplete-related properties that allow for autocompletion of file system paths and URLs, history lists, MRU lists and custom strings.

So why do we want you to spend money on the autocomplete feature, when .NET Framework 2.0 provides it for free?

Because Dynamic AutoComplete Tool provides more powerful autocomplete features as summarized in the following table:

	.NET Framework 2.0	Dynamic AutoComplete Tool
Technology	Native extension of the .NET 2.0-provided TextBox and ComboBox controls.	IExtenderProvider implementation with customizable plug-in architecture.
Supported components	TextBox, ComboBox	TextBox, ComboBox, DataGridTextBoxColumn, ListView/TreeView label editing text box, any other user control with embedded text box.
Autocompletion mode	Auto-suggest, Auto-append, both.	Auto-suggest, Auto-append, both.
Autocomplete string source	File system, history list, most recently used (MRU) list, custom source (only StringCollection supported as custom source).	File system, history list, most recently used (MRU) list, registry string source, any other .NET data source (IList/IListSource-based).
Autocomplete list persistence	Must be handled manually in combination with the custom string source.	Handled automatically in combination with the built-in registry string source.

Simply put, by using the Dynamic AutoComplete Tool, you can improve the usability of your application that works in .NET Framework 1.1 as well as in .NET Framework 2.0 without any change to your application's code.

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