<p>Returning to WinForms in VS2008 after a long time.. Tinkering with a OOD problem in VS2008 Express Edition.</p>

<p>I need some controls to be "display only" widgets. The user should not be able to change the value of these controls... the widgets are updated by a periodic update tick event. I vaguely remember there being a ReadOnly property that you could set to have this behavior... can't find it now.</p>

<p>The <strong>Enabled</strong> property set to false: grays out the control content. I want the control to look normal.
The <strong>Locked</strong> property set to false: seems to be protecting the user from accidentally distorting the control in the Visual Form Designer.</p>

<p>What am I missing? </p>

For some typical winforms controls:
http://jquiz.wordpress.com/2007/05/29/c-winforms-readonly-controls/
This is also a good tip to preserve the appearance:
```
```
Color clr = textBox1.BackColor;
    textBox1.ReadOnly = true;
    textBox1.BackColor = clr;
```
```