Properties page
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The Properties page of the Object Inspector enables you to set design-time properties for components on your form, and for the form itself. By setting properties at design time you are defining the initial state of a component. You can set run-time properties by writing source code within event handlers.
The Properties page displays the properties of the selected component on the form.
Property Name
Properties come by default arranged by name. The first column lists the names of the published properties for the selected component.
Displaying sub-properties:
- Plus sign
. Click to display the sub-properties of a property. The list can include the possible values when the property represents a set of flags (the value column lists the set enclosed in square brackets []), or sub-properties if the property represents an object (the value column gives the name of the object, enclosed in parentheses()). - Minus sign
. Click the to collapse the sub-properties.
Note: You can also use the keyboard + and – keys to expand or collapse properties.
If you arrange the properties by category (right-click, Arrange | by Category), the categories are listed alphabetically. You can view properties associated with each category by clicking the + sign. For more information, see How the Object Inspector Displays Properties.
Properties that are dark red in color by default are component references, which are properties that can be components as well.
Property Value
The second column on the Properties page displays the property values as follows:
- When the property is selected, the value changes to an edit control where you can type a new value.
- If the value can be set using a dialog, an
ellipsis button appears when the property is selected. Click this button to display a dialog where you can set the property. You can also display the dialog by double-clicking the value column.
- If the value is an enumerated type, a
drop-down button appears when the property is selected. Click this button to display a drop-down list that you can use to set the property. You can see images in the drop-down lists for properties that include images such as Cursor, BrushKind, Color, and Images.
- Note: To view images referenced by the ImageIndex property, you need to set the property that holds the image list to the image list containing the images.
- If the value is another component, you can shift the focus to that component by holding down the
Ctrlkey while double-clicking. For example, if the DataSet property of a data source is set to Table1,Ctrl-double-clickon Table1 in the value column displays the properties from Table1 in the Object Inspector.- Note: It only works on the VCL framework.