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I have been trying out Studio 11 and found a problem with Expression Blend. Seems that if I have a Studio 11 WPF project and set the target framework to '.NET Framework 4', Blend will show the design view, but if I set the target framework to '.NET Framework 4.5', it just shows the XAML (No design view).

Has anyone see this problem and is there a workaround?

Thanks.

Tyrel Van Niekerk
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2 Answers2

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You tagged this question with Expression Blend 4. Blend 4 does not work with Visual Studio 11 Beta. You need the version of Blend that is packaged with Visual Studio 11 Beta. In the release announcement, they did say:

Please be aware that in the Visual Studio beta, the XAML authoring support for Windows 8 is not quite at the same level of stability and completeness yet as the HTML authoring support.

James McNellis
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Mike Post
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  • Yes, I was using the version that came installed with VS 11 and it works, so long as you pick framework 4 and not framework 4.5. Was just wondering if there was a workaround, tweak some project setting etc. that would convince Blend it's ok to show the design view. Pretty sure the UI can handle it. There's probably just some check in Blend that does not recognize 4.5 as a valid .net platform yet. – Tyrel Van Niekerk Apr 12 '12 at 12:22
  • Yes, they seem to be rather slow with Blend support for new platforms compared to their other tooling. Blend for Silverlight 5 is still offered as a "preview", months after SL5 was released. – Mike Post Apr 12 '12 at 14:28
  • Yes, that's true. I guess they are trying to get us to use the VS built in tools instead of the expression suite. Although, there are certain things that you need Blend for like creating sample data and animations etc. – Tyrel Van Niekerk Apr 13 '12 at 15:28
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    No doubt. And Visual State Manager, Properties windows that can actually be used, etc. Also the version of Blend that comes with VS 2012 does NOT support WPF or Silverlight. It only supports Metro App XAML... – Jason Stevenson Jul 24 '12 at 14:22
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There's a new preview version for 4.5

I'm using all the RTM bits for VS11 and saw this same problem when switching the target framework to 4.5 - which I guess makes sense because Blend 4 doesn't know how to load the 4.5 types.

Simon_Weaver
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