my visual studio.net 2003 is putting "protected with events for the server controls (see below)" in my code behind files; whenever I am working with my web form files. It is making my code more difficult to read. Please help.

***********
Protected WithEvents lblFirstName As System.Web.UI.WebControls.Label
    Protected WithEvents txtFirstName As...
************************

Hello,

By default that's how it always does it. What problems are you having? If you need any other access (like between forms), you could use a property:

Public Property FirstName() As String
Get
  Return txtFirstName.Text
End Get
Set(Value As String)
  txtFirstName.Text = Value
End Set
End Property

If you are having problems within the web form, you shouldn't have any of these problems with protected access... Do you have any code to post maybe?

Brian

When working with web forms, you need to have "Protected WithEvents" preceding the controls, well almost.

Protected: You have to have this. This is what establishes the link between the instance of the control that is declared in the HTML (<asp:button...>) and the instance in the code-behind (Protected WithEvents cmdClickMe As System.Web.UI.WebControls.Button).

WithEvents: This is not always required. This is used to provide the linkup of the event handlers so that you can create a method and use "Handles cmdClickMe.Click" to wire in the event. If you have a control on a web form that does not require events (which is more likely than not for things like labels or text boxes) you can remove the "WithEvents" keyword. Usually, the things that need event wiring are buttons, radio buttons, checkboxes, selects (dropdownlist or listbox), etc. If you want to use a text box's OnChanged event, then you would need it.

Readability is one thing, optimization is another. If you have a lot of controls on a page, it would probably be a little faster if you don't have "WithEvents" on controls that don't need it. On a page by page basis, you probably wouldn't notice it but once the application is being used my many users at the same time, things will be faster.

Peter
-------------------------
Work smarter, not harder