Animated User Controls in Design Mode

[rliq]

I drag my Windows Forms User Control onto my form in design mode.

One of the properties of the User Control is, "Boolean Animate = false;".

This property can be changed in design mode using the Properties form within Visual Studio as it has a [Desciption("..."), Category("...")] attribute.

If it is set to true, then some text spins around (for example) and takes say 5 seconds to complete it's animation.

In design mode this is a pain (imagine having 10 of these User Controls on your form). In design mode, I just want some visual indication that the text will spin. At runtime, it should do the actual spin.

Ok, I can do all of that, but I just wanted to confirm one thing with you guys here.

Do you use...

if (DesignMode)
{
    // simple visual indication
}
else
{
    SpinTheText(); 
}

to prevent this or is there an alternative technique?

It just seems to me that the design only happens once (ok maybe a few times), whereas the application will be run many times and the "if (DesignMode)" becomes an overhead at runtime.

I understand that there will be Timer's involved in the animation and one option is to not start the Timer in design mode, but the point of this post is to determine whether "if (DesignMode)" is the way to go.