Xaml Designer Tool
Dec 23, 2015 Hi. I have a problem with VS2015 community. I downloaded some samples like 'XAML ListView and Gr 1' for test but I can't see stuff in XAML designer. What are some good applications and tools that graphic designers can use to work with WPF interfaces? There's plenty of opinions about 'need' of a visual designer. The WPF XAML designer (with a decade of development behind it) is fine for students just getting into.
Designing XAML in Visual Studio. 5 minutes to read. Contributors. In this article Visual Studio and Blend for Visual Studio both provide visual tools for building engaging user interfaces and rich media experiences with XAML for a variety of app types.
Both tools share a common set of features including a visual XAML editor, but Blend for Visual Studio provides additional design tools for more advanced tasks such as animation and behaviors. The process of designing an app depends on the tool you choose and your target platform. This present topic compares the XAML design tools in Visual Studio and Blend for Visual Studio. For more detailed walkthroughs of using the tools, see the following topics:. Choosing the Right Tool Your choice of design tools is largely dependent on your skill set. If you are more code-oriented, you can write XAML code in Visual Studio to accomplish even advanced design tasks.
If you are more design-oriented, Blend for Visual Studio lets you perform advanced tasks without writing code. You can switch back and forth between Visual Studio and Blend for Visual Studio, and you can even have the same project open in both at the same time. Changes made to XAML files in one IDE can be applied via automatic reload when you switch to the other IDE. You can control the reload behavior via options in the Tools, Options dialog box in either IDE.
Shared Capabilities For most basic tasks, the IDE for Visual Studio and Blend for Visual Studio share the same set of windows and capabilities, with some subtle differences. Some highlights include:. A consistent user interface: You can design your applications within the familiar context of the Visual Studio user interface, which makes switching between IDEs a more pleasant and productive experience.
Blend for Visual Studio uses the Visual Studio Dark theme that helps you focus on the content you are designing by improving the contrast between your content and the user interface. XAML IntelliSense: Both IDEs support all of the common capabilities you would expect from IntelliSense including statement completion, support for common editor operations like commenting and formatting code, and navigation to resources, binding, and code. Basic debugging capabilities: You can now debug in Blend, including setting breakpoints in your code to debug your running app. To maintain a consistent debugging experience with Visual Studio, Blend for Visual Studio includes most of Visual Studio's debugging windows and toolbars. Advanced debugging capabilities such as diagnostics and code analysis are only available in Visual Studio.
File reload experience: You can edit your XAML files in either Blend for Visual Studio or Visual Studio, and have your edited files reload automatically as you switch between them. To minimize workflow interruptions, you can now set your file reload preferences in the file reload dialog. Synchronized Layouts and Settings: Custom layouts enable you to save and apply tool window layout customizations. Visual Studio will synchronize these customizations and preferences for both Visual Studio and Blend for Visual Studio across machines when you sign in with the same Microsoft account. A common Solution Explorer: The Solution Explorer provides you with an organized view of your projects and their files, as well as ready access to the commands associated with them. With Solution Explorer, it is easier to work with big enterprise projects.
Team Explorer: With Team Explorer you can manage your projects with GIT or TFS repositories to facilitate team collaboration. NuGet: You can manage NuGet packages in both Visual Studio and Blend for Visual Studio. NuGet is a package manager for the.NET Framework that simplifies the installation and removal of packages from a solution.
Advanced Capabilities in Blend for Visual Studio To increase your productivity, consider using Blend for Visual Studio for the following tasks. These are the areas where Blend for Visual Studio offers more speed and functionality than the Visual Studio designer or code alone. To Visual Studio Blend for Visual Studio More information Create animations There is no design tool for animations; you have to create them programmatically. This requires an understanding of the animation and timing system in WPF and extensive coding expertise. You create animations visually and can preview them in Blend for Visual Studio. This is faster and more accurate than building your animations in code.
You can add triggers to handle user interaction, and you can switch to code to add event handlers and other functionality. Turn shapes and text into paths for easier manipulation Not supported.
You can make subtle or dramatic changes to shapes (such as rectangles and ellipses) by converting them to paths, which provide better editing control. You can reshape or combine paths, and create compound paths from multiple shapes. You can also convert text blocks into paths to manipulate them as vector images. Add interactivity to your UI designs Requires C#, Visual Basic, or C code. Drag and drop behaviors onto controls to add interactivity to your static designs.
Behaviors are ready-to-use code snippets that encapsulate functionality such as drag/drop, zoom, and visual state changes. There's a growing set of behaviors you can choose from, and you can create your own. You can then customize each behavior by changing its properties in Blend for Visual Studio or by adding event handlers in code. Use Adobe artwork Not supported.
Import Adobe FXG, PhotoShop, or Illustrator artwork and implement the UI in Blend for Visual Studio. Edit controls, templates, and styles Requires coding and knowledge of WPF styles and templates. Turn any image into a control. Use the template editing tools to make changes to controls, styles, and templates with just a few mouse clicks. For example, you can use Blend for Visual Studio style resources to implement common WPF controls (such as buttons, list boxes, scroll bars, menus, etc.), and change their color, style, or underlying template directly in Blend for Visual Studio.
You can then switch to code for finishing touches if you want. Connect your UI to data You can create a data source from resources such as SQL Server databases, WCF or web services, objects, or SharePoint lists, and bind the data source to your UI controls. Design-time data must be created by hand for an interactive design experience. Create sample data easily for prototyping and testing.
Switch to live data when you're ready. Blend for Visual Studio's data generation capabilities are outstanding (you can add names, numbers, URLs, photos easily on the fly), and can save you a lot of time. For live data, you can bind your UI controls to an XML file or to any CLR data source.
Xaml Design Tools
For more information about advanced XAML design, see.
Xaml Design Tools
Most of the content in this SDK documentation is focused on creating WPF applications 'by hand,' meaning typing the XAML markup and code that comprises the application UI and functionality. However, especially in the case of creating visual presentation and behavior (UI, graphics, animation, and so on), it is often faster and easier to use a design tool. This overview briefly introduces several Microsoft design tools: Microsoft Expression Design: This tool is aimed at designers and artists who require a powerful drawing tool. All art created in Expression Design can be exported as XAML, making it easy for a designer to hand off artwork to WPF developers. Microsoft Expression Blend: This tool is used to create WPF UI presentation and behavior. Blend integrates with Expression Design and Visual Studio to blend together a full WPF design/development solution. WPF Designer: This is part of Visual Studio 2008 and lets you create your UI, via a graphical user interface or by editing XAML, in the same tool that you use to write your application.
XAMLPad: A lightweight simple editor that shows the results of XAML as you type. Microsoft Expression Design Expression Design is a specialized drawing tool used to create vector-based art that can be exported as a normal image or as XAML.
This tool is designed to be used by artists or designers to create art and then use another tool to integrate the art into a WPF application. For example, an artist could create a high-quality graphic with Expression Design and then hand that art off as a XAML file to a developer using Expression Blend or another development tool. For a list of features or to download this tool, see. Microsoft Expression Blend Expression Blend is used to create WPF applications and is particularly well suited to designing UI presentation and behavior. In Blend you can specify the look and layout of UI controls and other application objects, create property triggers, and add animations. In addition, you can simplify management of your UI by using styles, control templates, and resources. All of these things can be done using the Blend Design Mode, or you can toggle to see and edit the XAML markup directly.
When you need to change code used for application logic (for example, when you open a C# file), Blend opens the file in Visual Studio or another development tool. For a list of features or to download this tool, see. WPF Designer The WPF Designer is part of Visual Studio 2008 and provides visual design support. While Expression Blend is a powerful tool that allows you to fully customize your application's UI without editing the XAML, you can also use the WPF Designer's graphical user interface to build the UI of an app within Visual Studio. You can build user interfaces for your applications by dragging controls from the Toolbox and setting properties in the Properties window.
You can also edit XAML directly in the XAML editor. For more information, see. XAMLPad XAMLPad is a lightweight editor that ships for free with the SDK. With XAMLPad, you can type XAML in the editor while the resultant presentation is displayed as you type.
Wpf Designer
If you have the SDK installed, you can find XAMLPad in the Tools folder. (Click Start, point to All Programs, click Microsoft Windows SDK, click Tools, and then click XAMLPad.).