Help us improve WPF and UWP XAML designer

Olia Gavrysh

May 28th, 202018 0

We would like to make your experience developing WPF and UWP applications in Visual Studio better!

Currently we are investigating ways of improving the XAML Designer and making you more productive while developing UI for your apps. You can already check out our preview version of the new feature called Suggested Actions that enables easy access to common properties when a control is selected. This feature is available in  Visual Studio 2019 Preview version 16.6 and later. To use it, first enable it through Options > Preview Features > XAML Suggested Actions. Once enabled, click on a supported control and use the “light bulb” to expand and interact with the Suggested Actions UI.

Suggested Actions for Button in Visual Studion

 

We’d like to know, what else would you like to see in WPF or UWP XAML Designer. Please take this survey and tell us how we can improve Visual Studio and create better tools for you!

Take the survey! 

Survey illustration

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18 comments

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  • Indudhar Gowda 0

    Can somebody provide Video Tutorial on UWP Blend. (bring the Developer of blend record and Upload on channel 9 )

    1. I searched entire google but could not find a proper Guide to UWP Blend

    2. Video Tutorial should Focus on Animation, Visual state Manager,Triggers etc…

  • Max Mustermueller 0
    1. Color preview for dynamic resources
    2. Intellisense improvements for dynamic datacontext. Intellisense is currently extremely limited. Sometimes properties don’t show up in intellisense depending on where datacontext is set (for example when its set in constructor of the window/usercontrol).
    3. Ability to create example data just for the designer preview without extending our own code. For example right click on listview and “generate example data” which fills the same by whatever the datasource is bound to (simply calling their ctors). This is useful for keeping our own code clean but still being able to preview something on the designer which is only generated on runtime otherwise.
    4. Please finally fix the background of usercontrols. Most of the time they are transparent and you don’t see anything in the designer. This is a common issue which can be solved by using the undocumented “d:DesignStyle”. But why not simple add a small button at the bottom of the designer to change the background color of the designer for this particular page to a user defined color?!

    Personally I don’t need the light bulb nor the property window. They’re great for beginners though. But unlike Winforms most developers probably use the code editor for everything.

  • devtommy 0

    1.) I would like to know what is the future of UWP and XAML UWP after project reunion (.net 6.0, MAUI, WinUI 3) ?
    2.) What will be the suggested platform for making Micrsoft Store apps?
    3.) What is the future of Micrsoft Store for apps?

  • James Trela 0

    Incorporate higher RAD features, such as creating the proper controls when a 2 DataTables in a parent-child relationship are dragged onto a form. I am think of a dropdown list for selecting the parent, and a DataGrid to display the child rows of the selected parent.

    Use the ideas in the abandoned “Jasper” project, or Silverlight’s LightSwitch product.

    • James Trela 0

      For ScrollViewers, automatically generate the design-time/d: namespace attributes that specify DPI offsets used to display the content (in Design mode) that is below or to the right of the screen. This would save developers from having to look up how to do this in StackOverflow.

      • James Trela 0

        For most controls, only the respective content property has two-way binding as its default binding. The default direction of all other properties is one-way. The color of this content property should be different and unique to make this explicit. I am in the habit of always specifying the binding direction explicitly. Maybe there should be a setting in the Designer to automatically and ecolicitly generate the binding direction attribute.

  • Isu Kim 0

    xaml is hell when it starts to be used with viewmodel

  • Kémeri Lajos 0

    Support WPF under Linux.

  • Gauthier M. 0

    Linux support of WPF is more important than designer improvment (everybody use the text editor anyway)….

  • Marek IÅ¡tvánek 0

    I do not use XAML designer for long time, but edit XAML directly, because it is more reliable for me.
    What I miss is XAML preview only and support for XAML styles loaded dynamically during application startup so that we can see XAML in its runtime form.
    Thank You

  • E A 0

    This cool

  • Alex111 0

    I also would prefer Linux support for WPF or Xamarin Forms instead of improving the designer. Anyway even a fully working HotReload would be much more important for me…

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