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This was inspired by a question I asked recently regarding design time behaviour in my WPF app. (Can't databind at design time in WPF using MVVM - ViewModel property never gets called)

The net result of that is that my design time DataContext/ViewModel works perfectly in Blend, but doesn't show up in Visual Studio 2008. I've decided not to look further into it as Blend support is all I really need, but this surprised me as I had been working under the assumption that Blend and VS would have similar if not identical WPF designers.

So what are the differences? Any other gotchas anyone is aware of? All info welcomed :)

Community
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randomsequence
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  • I like the answers posted so far but was kinda hoping for some understanding of what happens 'under the hood' in Blend vs VS. I appreciate this is a search for esoteric knowledge that is probably known by very few but I like to get a deep understanding where possible, especially when I can't account for the differing behaviour between the two apps! I can recommend Nick's links however for anyone looking for some handy info on the differences. – randomsequence Feb 22 '10 at 09:53

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In short, WPF matured after VS 2008, so the designer is pretty much crap since it went in very late in the development cycle for Visual Studio.

In VS 2010 however, the designer is much improved (as well as app WPF stuff in general...a lot of the VS 2010 components are WPF themselves), but I would stick with Blend for now. I personally use Blend for the design, Visual Studio for the code.

Coming up shortly with VS 2010/WPF 4:

Nick Craver
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  • Thanks Nick. As I updated above I'm hoping for some real info on what's happening behind the scenes, but in the quite likely event that that never surfaces this is a perfectly good answer and at least explains why Blend does what I expect while VS 2008 doesn't. I'll accept this if no more detail pops up as it's good info :) – randomsequence Feb 22 '10 at 09:55
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i just want to tell what's my opinion. In Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Web Developer 2008, both don't have the function of designing UI. so your design doesn't show in VS2008. but In Visual Studio 2010, it becomes better.Visual Studio 2010 will support a fully editable and interactive designer for Silverlight.

kiddy
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