Visual Studio and Blend 4 Design Problem
I have a VS 2010 C# solution file that I am opening in Blend 4. The file opens with no errors, however if I attempt to build it in Blend the program lists a few missing references and then crashes Blend. Here is the issue that I am really trying to solve since I think I can solve the missing references in due course. Once the solution is opened in blend the Design tool for any XAML does not display at all. VIEW >> Active Document View >> Design View, etc. are all grayed out. What is the secret to having a programmer work in VS and hand off solution files for a designer like me to work on GUI in Blend. It seems MS has made this a difficult procedure to master.
It sounds like you created the project using the Class Library project template instead of the WPF User Control Library template. When you put these two project files side by side, you'll see that the WPF User Control Library project has this additional line near the top of the project file:
<ProjectTypeGuids>{60dc8134-eba5-43b8-bcc9-bb4bc16c2548};{FAE04EC0-301F-11D3-BF4B-00C04F79EFBC}</ProjectTypeGuids>
This is what tells Blend it can display a design surface for the items in the project. There's lots of stuff you can make in Visual Studio that cannot be displayed in Blend, so Visual Studio needs some way of communicating to Blend that it should attempt to load designers. Edit your .csproj file to contain the above GUIDs and I bet it will work.
Related
I am using a .net core 3.1 WinForms Application.
Moving controls works perfectly fine outside of a tab control, but the moment I place a control inside of a TabPage I am unable to move it again. I can no longer select it from the designer either, and the only way I can is to select it from the properties menu.
After I access it from there, the only thing I can do is resize it, as shown in the image below:
Things I tried:
Made sure the component was not locked.
Pressed escape (as per the solution here)
Rebuilt the solution.
Restarted Visual Studio.
Deleted Visual Studio's AppData folder.
Made sure my Dock property was set to none.
Ensured Visual Studio is on my primary monitor
I really want to use tab pages with my application, but I don't want to keep resizing it everytime I want to move something, so any help is greatly appreciated.
Update: I decided to switch my project from .Net Core to .Net Framework and it now works, so it must have something to do with .Net Core. I'll leave this open if anyone has a solution for .Net Core.
Is there a way to add a button to Visual Studio 2013 Professional to have it automatically add two references to a project?
Background: I'm using VS2013 to write scripts for Unity 3D. Whenever I hit the "Sync MonoDevelop Project" action within Unity, it rebuilds the project, and upon opening the project in VS2013 it's missing two references for Unity's DLLs. I need to add these, which is pretty quick to do, but I'm looking to shave a few seconds off here and there if possible.
Thanks
how well can LightSwitch work together with Blend? I saw in some videos that you can use custom Silverlight control in LS and naturally I can create them with Blend.
But can Blend in itself be used to customize the screens of a LightSwitch application? It seems LS doesn't use Xaml but puts all screen in an application.lsml file which is invalid for Blend. Is there support coming here?
Thanks in advance.
No. You will never be able to customize the LightSwitch 'Screens' in Blend, because as you have seen, they live inside the application.lsml file. If you build a Shell Extension, you could use Blend to do the basic layout, but most of the work is in C# or VB. For a Theme Extension, you could certainly use Blend to edit the Theme Visusl Pallette Resource Dictionary. See this link for the a cookbook guide to building the various types of LightSwitch Extensions: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/lightswitch/archive/2011/03/16/lightswitch-beta-2-extensibility-cookbook.aspx. There is also now an accompanying Visual Studio project template available for Beta 2.
LightSwitch works fine with Expression Blend, but only for custom Silverlight controls (Expression Blend will throw an error that it can't load any LightSwitch projects that are part of the solution, but it will load any Silverlight control projects).
You cannot edit any of the automatic LightSwitch UI, but you do not have to use any of the standard LightSwitch UI if you need changes.
I would recommend creating Silverlight custom controls not LightSwitch extensions, the difference is that a control extension has a design-time experience in Visual Studio and is MUCH harder to create (Silverlight custom controls are actually very easy to create).
See this article for an example:
http://lightswitchhelpwebsite.com/Blog/tabid/61/EntryId/2/Creating-A-LightSwitch-Custom-Silverlight-Control.aspx
I've bound the key combination Ctrl+B, Ctrl+B to the Build Only Project command. I have a solution with a web application, several business layer dlls, and several Silverlight projects. I want to build the Silverlight project I'm working in with the key stroke to avoid building everything everytime. I'm growing tired of having to right click on the project, then clicking build everytime. Why isn't Build only project available and how can I make it so?
If finally revisited this and realized that I could create a macro in Visual Studio 2010. Here is the macro script (very basic). Maybe it will help someone. I mapped it to ctrl + 6, 6 to avoid to much movement from my mouse.
Sub BuildCurrentProject()
DTE.ExecuteCommand("ClassViewContextMenus.ClassViewProject.Build")
End Sub
This works well with the "Solution Navigator" from the Visual Studio Productivity Power Tools extension
I am a bit confused on how Visual Studio 2010 and Expression Blend 4 operate together. If I want to create a WPF application, should I start it in Expression Blend 4? If so, then how does Visual Studio 2010 natively open Expression Blend projects, or does it?
Or should I start my application in Visual Studio 2010? If so, how do I open my solution in Expression Blend.
Also, how do I modify an existing WPF form, if I need changes. If I already have events handled and code behind, how do I bring it over to expression blend, make my changes, then bring it back to visual studio without disrupting the events and code that I have created in Visual Studio 2010?
Also can someone recommend a good book that covers how to create WPF and/or Silverlight applications using Expression blend 4 and Visual Studio 2010 together.
Solutions are the same for Visual Studio and Expression Blend. You can open your solution through the file menu in expression blend, or by right clicking on a xaml file in Visual Studio and select "Open In Expression Blend".
Personally, when I need to make only a small change, like changing the text on a button, I don't go into Blend. But when I want to see what's going on, with margins and layout and stuff I always use Blend. Most often I have Visual Studio and Blend open side by side and I keep switching back and forth.
Because Expression Blend uses the same solution you don't have to worry about event handlers and such. When they are in place, they stay in place. Unless you delete the control the event is attached to of course.
Creating a solution can be done in both tools, but I start most projects in Visual Studio. There are however a few Project templates that can't be found in visual studio. For example the Databound Application project type. This will give you a start on an MVVM project, with folders in place for the Model, View and ViewModel.
You can have it open in both Visual Studio and Blend at the same time. You're prompted in Visual Studio if you make a change in Blend and vice versa.
Personally I create the new application in Visual Studio first then open it in Blend.
I usualy start my project in Blend.
Remember Blend is specially designed to make great UI, easy databindig, make easy templates and custom controls.
You can edit the code behind of your app directly in Blend but sometimes it doesn't show the intellisense; thats when you need open VS, to do that right click on your project inside blend and click on edit with Visual Studio. It'll launch VS and you can start coding.
You dont need to close VS or Blend, they booth can be open, if you make some change in VS it will notify Blend, will appear a dialogbox telling you: reload the app, click Yes the changes will be sincronized in Blend and VS, the same happens when you make changes in Blend and go to an already open instance of VS.
Too remember to install de VS tools, it will allow you to open Silverlight projects inside VS, if they arent already installed an error message will appear.
Hope my answer help you