How to open custom editor for property in PropertyGrid from the outside?

Compositing in .NET Custom Controls

• How do I prevent flicker in my .NET app? I have a custom control and I'd like the contents of this control to draw in a very snappy way, meaning I basically want the contents (a bunch of Labels) to appear fully drawn at the same time. Obviously, this calls for double-buffering. I know about the Control.DoubleBuffer property, but that only double buffers each control individually. I want the contents of my custom control to be composited and drawn to a single back-buffer before being blitted. My current solution doesn't use a custom control at all, but rather draws each label on a bitmap and blits that to the screen. This is not very elegant, so I'm refactoring to use custom controls, but the flicker is a deal-breaker for me. What's the simplest way for me to achieve my goal? Thanks!

• Answer:

  The way to stop flickering is to understand the theory behind it an then apply it to your case. Basically, what you want to do is to prevent the window from drawing multiple times. You want a single draw. To do so, the usual strategies are to have a DC that is separate from the windows, let everything draw there, and then draw one time on the window. Other strategies include preventing window updates while things are happening (LockWindowUpdate?), and taking control of your background erasing. It is not elegant AT ALL to use a bunch of controls within a control. There is quite some overhead involved. The elegant approach is to draw the labels in memory and blit to the window...like you seem to have been doing.