Handling of generic collections

I'm interested in the way these different kinds of generic types are handled by PropertyGrid:

   public class Element : Observable {
      public List<string> Blah { get; set; }
      public ObservableCollection<string> ObservableBlah { get; set; }
      public object ObservableObject { get; set; }

      public Element()
      {
         Blah=new List<string>();
         Blah.Add("Fubar");
         ObservableBlah=new ObservableCollection<string>();
         ObservableObject=new ObservableCollection<string>();
      }
   }

Both Blah and ObservableBlah have the insert button within the grid, but ObservableObject doesn't, even though the underlying object is exactly the same as ObservableBlah.  It seems you're getting the generic type information from Element.ObservableObject rather than from the instance pointed to by ObservableObject.  Wouldn't it be better to use the type of the instance rather than the property?  That way, the user would still be able to insert into this collection.  Or am I missing something?

kd

We use the declared property type (plus other metadata like type converters) to determine what kind of editor to display.  Similarly, if you have a property of type object that happens at the moment to contain an enum, you'll get the "grey box" rather than a drop-down.  If you know that the property is actually going to contain a particular type, use a PropertyEditor to assign a suitable editor.