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Rob Relyea - XAMLified

WPF, Silverlight and XAML

XamlDesigner – View Only/View or XAML/SplitView/XAML with Preview/XAML Only

Pausing to think about next steps after making strong progress in the “Exploring: XamlPad to XamlDesigner” journey in the last 10 days. 3 major things from that Exploring post that haven’t been tackled in XamlPadSample include: Silverlight support, Designer support, and Editor richness.

I’m going to explore Designer support options with this post.

I had originally sketched out this area as:

XAML Step: PropertyGrid, Selection Model, SourcePreservation

  • Simple Property Grid
  • Selection model enabling selection in View surface or Xaml editor, and synchronized editor.
  • Source preservation of XAML with XamlDom based store

But now I’m realizing there may be a few different directions that people may want. This may be because different domains (UI, Workflow, etc…) or different users types (UI Developers, UI Designers, WorkFlow modelers, etc…).

Approaches to XamlDesign Surfaces

View only – never show XAML

A customer recently asked an associate of mine for a WPF hostable designer with a View Only Design surface. This would require a toolbox, interactions to add, move and remove controls, and ability to change values (either with a property grid or “on object” manipulations). Source code preservation may or may not be important in this scenario. Should XML comments be preserved? How about white space?

View or XAML – but never both at the same time

In VS2010 & .NET 4, Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) provides this View or XAML design experience.

View and/or XAML - splitview with interactive view

VS (via “Cider”) and Blend both offer a fully functional split view, with an interactive design canvas + property grid, and an editable XAML pane.

XAML with Preview

XamlPads offer a View which is a preview mode, and an editable XAML pane.

XAML Only

This sounds like notepad. :-) (but maybe you could have notepad with intellisense)

What is your ideal? For UI, workflow, data, other?

Would love to hear thoughts on these various approaches. 

For UI, is splitview the preferred model for devs and designers? Or does the XamlPad approach (XAML with Preview) have merit?

For Workflow, are people happy with View or XAML, but never both at the same time?

Any thoughts or feedback in this space?

Published Saturday, January 30, 2010 2:33 PM by Rob_Relyea
Filed under: ,

Comments

# re: XamlDesigner – View Only/View or XAML/SplitView/XAML with Preview/XAML Only@ Saturday, January 30, 2010 6:33 PM

Hey Rob,

To me, when I type XAML, what I want is speed, responsiveness of the editor and Intellisense. I systematically disable the visual designer in VS10 because it slows things down (not even mentioning that it is very unstable in VS10 b2 but that is another matter). If I had a designer that was not slowing down my work in the XAML editor, then maybe I would use it.

Right now my preferred way to work is to have two different applications open. XAML editing in VS10 in the source code editor is fantastic (could be faster but I am sure it will be better in the RC) and for visual design, nothing beats Blend. The two applications approach also speeds things up, because each app is optimized for the task it does.

Then again I did XAML long enough that it became quite natural and when I see XAML markup, I can visualize the scene in my head. So maybe others think differently.

Cheers,

Laurent

by Laurent Bugnion

# re: XamlDesigner – View Only/View or XAML/SplitView/XAML with Preview/XAML Only@ Sunday, January 31, 2010 5:12 AM

For me, I definitely write XAML - I want to have precise control of what is happening, exact numbers, panels which I prefer, not everything in grid with margins. Preview is nice, but often there is some trick that Cider does not get at design time, so I don't have it anyway. Then of course "XAML only" wins to get maximum screen size, I don't like wrapping the tags very much. In any case I have never touched the designer when doing real work. So my preferences sorted are: XAML with Preview, XAML Only, XAML and/or View (as long as I can switch vertical/horizontal), and View or XAML. This is for WPF projects though, not sure about the other XAML uses. If no graphics or layout were concerned, then probably View Only might work too. Hope this helps!

by Jan Kučera

# re: XamlDesigner – View Only/View or XAML/SplitView/XAML with Preview/XAML Only@ Sunday, January 31, 2010 8:24 AM

Actually, I use all of these views, but in different situations. In Blend I may start in Design view for example when importing from Expression Design, add Sample data and bind that using the Blend UI. Then when skinning controls, I like to have a split view, so I can see the XAML and the results of that in de Design pane. Then when adding event handlers and logic I may linger in the Blend code editor until I really need VS. In VS I close the designer, but want excellent intellisense and code completion. Debugging only in VS too. In the past I used XamlPad for viewing and checking XAML code only.

by Antoni Dol

# Dew Drop – January 31, 2010 | Alvin Ashcraft's Morning Dew@ Sunday, January 31, 2010 11:48 AM

Pingback from  Dew Drop – January 31, 2010 | Alvin Ashcraft's Morning Dew

by Dew Drop – January 31, 2010 | Alvin Ashcraft's Morning Dew

# re: XamlDesigner – View Only/View or XAML/SplitView/XAML with Preview/XAML Only@ Monday, February 01, 2010 3:04 AM

Generally, all our developers are accustomed to using the xaml-editor exclusively for editing. Primarily for the same reasons as Jan Kučera posted above. However, high on the wishlist among us is the ability to preview the xaml in an editor while editing xaml. Editing directly in an editor isn't a priority for us, especially after having seen the type of code being generated by the current tools available (i.e. Expression Blend).

by Ragnar Roos

# re: XamlDesigner – View Only/View or XAML/SplitView/XAML with Preview/XAML Only@ Thursday, February 18, 2010 9:45 AM

What I would really like is dual screen editing : preview on my side-screen and actual editing on the main... I don't think it's possible yet, and well, I just figured of that right now... V_next ? ^^

by Simon Ferquel

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