I've worked with Visual Studio 2008 and editing XAML was really painful because the designer reloaded very slowly. Now I have installed Visual Studio 2010 and it seems to me that the XAML editor + Designer haven't changed much.
For example in order to force designer to change a color in my control I have to close the xaml file and open it again.
Is it just my problem?
I've tried this solution: Visual Studio 2008 Xaml Editor not working / disappeared but it didn't help.
Are there any better tools for Visual Studio to edit XAML?
Thanks!
EDIT: Compiling forces redrawing of the designer but my solution is quite large now and it takes a lot of time.
I run 2010 on an old core 2 duo (~1.2ghz) laptop with 4gb of memory and the xaml editor is fine.
If you've got a MASSIVE xaml document you might want to think about breaking it into user controls to simplify the document. Also, think about the machine you're running. If it doesn't have at least 3gb of memory you're going to be fighting with the disk. Memory is cheap, make sure you have as much as possible.
I didn't experience the same problem, instead I saw that Visual Studio 2010 is faster than its previous version to load a XAML into the designer.
Btw, I suggest you to show only the XAML, either collapsing the designer window or pressing ESC during the loading: the first time is slow, but other times is faster.
Hope this helps.
If you can, get hold of Expression. For Visual Studio 2008 it was a much better visual XAML editor.
I know a lot of what it does was incorporated into Visual Studio 2010, so there might not be a lot of difference between the two now.
Related
Probably better to show by image here:
The color, the sharpness of the text, everything seems better in VS Code than in Visual Studio.
Is there any settings I can play with, or this is just how it is?
I found this question while I was trying to solve this problem myself, same font looking much more readable in VS Code compared to Visual Studio.
What worked for me in Visual Studio 2019 is extension called Text Sharp.
I use Consolas, and these settings finally made the font look the same in both editors:
I know I can manually pin and unpin the Visual Studio Toolbox, but what I would like to do is have it pinned when viewing the designer and automatically hide when I view the code. Is this possible?
Thanks, Jamie
Not as far as I know; I don't think the toolbox can differentiate between code and design views.
It's possible you could write an extension with the Visual Studio SDK that does what you're asking but I don't think it is possible otherwise.
Maybe Perspectives extension can help you. After installing you can save your current layout as perspective (just like in Eclipse) in Visual Studio 2010 and then switch between them.
Oh no....
I just realized it, that the Visual Studio 2008 is getting me confused.
If we compared to the DreamWeaver later version... not the latest one, okay...
That DreavWeaver has a SPLIT View (in between the design and code).
And here, the Visual Studio 2008 also has that capability.
The difference is that... in Visual Studio 2008,
When the user start Clicking the Designer portion, the cursor on Code view doesn't get into focus. Yeah, meanwhile, in DreamWeaver, at the time user click on the designer portion, the mouse pointer is focusing into the code location accordingly....
Uh, oh.... this is getting me tired. Shall I update something into this Visual Studio 2008 version, guys? :(
use Visual Studio 2010 and be happy
Is there any setting or plug-in to improve the solution explorer? Specifically, it would be amazing if I could have something like the windows file explorer, with folders on the left and files on the right (or split in two panes I can arrange any way I like).
In larger projects, I feel like I am constantly frustrated by scrolling up and down trying to find things, it's driving me crazy! Any suggestions would be appreciated.
This is for VS 2010
Mindscape Visual Studio File Explorer
http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/7193af78-b06e-48dd-8994-9deb2bfa1959
Also check Productivity Power Tools (http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/d0d33361-18e2-46c0-8ff2-4adea1e34fef?SRC=Home). There is nice thing - Solution Navigator
You can check this add in seems to be for visual studio 2005 but the source code is there
Im currently working on the GUI for an ASP.NET MVC application using Visual Studio 2005. The visual webpage designer (for the views) is awful.
Any input on what other people use would be most appreciated!
I'd like to advice you to create your markup by hand as everybody else does. Using designers is mostly unprofessional and leads to low quality results.
Visual Studio 2008 was a big step forward over 2005. 2005 was horrible. And Visual Studio 2010 is better yet - the quick snippets can save you a bunch of time once you get used to them.
Having installed and tested several products over the past few days, I have come to the conclusion that Microsoft Expression Studio is probably the best option when it comes to a visual design aid. Its code is clean and compliant, and although fairly basic, it allows you to create your layouts as required.