If you don't see the element handles, make sure the element is selected. In Design view, additional artboard commands are available in the lower-left area of the screen, as shown here: These commands are available on this toolbar: Zoom Zoom enables you to size the design surface. You can zoom from 12.5% to 800%, or select options such as Fit to Selection and Fit to All. Show/Hide snap grid Displays or hides the snap grid that shows the gridlines. Gridlines are used when you enable either snapping to gridlines or snapping to snaplines.

1. Xaml Design Tools
2. Install Xaml Designer

While an overview of XAML is outside the scope here, what is important to understand is that in includes controls and containers that can be used to lay out an adaptive interface and include transformations and storyboards for animations and response to mouse as well as touch manipulations and gestures. Expression Blend* Blend is a designer tool that provides a customizable workspace in which to work with both vector and bitmap (raster) graphics. One of the great features is that it works with the same project and solution structure that Visual Studio (the developer tool) uses. So instead of working with copies or representations of the design assets that the developer uses to build the application, the designer is using the same files. Blend is included both as a standalone product as well as part of a suite of products aimed for the designer. I use the Preview version of Blend for Visual Studio 2012 and Sketchflow, which includes not only tools for building Windows* Store (aka Metro) apps in HTML or XAML, but also support for WPF and Silverlight*.

It’s greatest strength is in working with code, but it still can be used to edit and work with XAML and HTML resources that make up a project. It works with the same file formats as Blend, so the workflow between designers and developers doesn’t require conversion or interpretation of intent.

You can also edit XAML directly in XAML view. For advanced XAML design tasks such as animations and behaviors, see.

The new XAML tools provided in Visual Studio 2015 helps. The UI Designer uses Blend to manage XAML design. Or Subscribe to this magazine for FREE and.

XAML Cruncher Created by the legendary Charles Petzold, XAML Cruncher was originally a sample program featured in Petzold’s book ‘’. The downloadable version 2.0 (available from ) has some extra features not seen in the book. XAML Cruncher is the most barebones XAML editor. It’s essentially a Notepad clone, with the addition of a large pane to the right which displays the result of parsing the XAML entered int0 text pane.

The markup file is compiled as a partial class that can be paired with a code behind file to implement behaviors and business logic, but doesn’t require it. The XAML language is expressive and declarative in the sense that from the markup one cannot only create an interface but specify interactions, data bindings, and behaviors without writing any C#, VB, or other code.

Use the CTRL+F11 to iterate thru the workspaces. The Artboard is a work surface that renders the current design in a way that lets the designer see the application.

The XAML Scrubber panel can automatically tidy up your code, with options to move attributes onto separate lines, re-order attributes by importance, remove common default values and control indentation and numeric precision. I have one gripe with Kaxaml.

You can also exchange the locations of the views (using the Swap Panes button), specify whether the views are arranged horizontally or vertically, and collapse either view. Markup Zoom Markup zoom enables you to size XAML view. You can zoom from 20% to 400%. Device window The Device window in XAML Designer enables you to simulate at design-time various views, displays, and display options for your project. The Device window is available on the Design menu when you are working in the XAML Designer. Here's what it looks like: These are the options available in the Device window: Display Specifies different display sizes and resolutions for the app.

I want a visual one as I'm very new to WPF and it would help me a lot. Currently I have set gVim to open up.xaml files, but editing the raw XML file is not easy if you don't know all the possible options / elements / properties / attributes you have available. I used to use Qt, and the Qt Designer application also edited XML files that specified how the UI is laid-out. It was a stand-alone application, and you never had to actually edit the XML content with a text-editor unless there was a bad problem. Is there a WPF equivalent?

All pages of the application, including the screen navigation map and any composite pages, are exported. This makes creating an accurate and complete document of all the points of interaction easy and fast.

WPF Designer: This is part of Visual Studio 2008 and lets you create your UI, via a graphical user interface or by editing XAML, in the same tool that you use to write your application. XAMLPad: A lightweight simple editor that shows the results of XAML as you type. Microsoft Expression Design Expression Design is a specialized drawing tool used to create vector-based art that can be exported as a normal image or as XAML.

Element handles You can modify an element by using the element handles that appear on the artboard when you move the pointer over the corners of the blue box that surrounds an element. These handles enable you to rotate, resize, flip, move, or add a corner radius to the element. The symbol for the element handle varies by function, and changes depending on the exact location of the pointer.

Some Shortcuts Some key things to know about working with Blend is that there are keyboard shortcuts that make the tool much easier to navigate and use. These include (in no special order of importance): • Pressing the Spacebar enables panning mode, where the mouse cursor turns to a hand and you can move around the artboard. • The Scrollwheel on the Mouse, by default, will zoom the workspace, which if you’re familiar with Visual Studio can be confusing. You can change the behavior to be triggered by CTRL + Scrollwheel in the Tools Options menu. If you do that, the Scrollwheel by itself will scroll up and down, Shift + Scrollwheel will move left and right.

In Design view, the window containing the artboard is the active window and you can use it as a primary work surface. You can use it to visually design a page in your app by adding or drawing elements, and then by modifying them. For more info, see. This illustration shows the artboard in Design view. These features are available in the artboard: Snaplines Snaplines are alignment boundaries that appear as red-dashed lines to show when the edges of controls are aligned, or when text baselines are aligned. Alignment boundaries appear only when snapping to snaplines is enabled.

The mini-toolbar enables you to set sizing options for Grid rows and columns. Resize handles Resize handles appear on selected controls and enable you to resize the control. When you resize a control, width and height values typically appear to help you size the control. For more information about manipulating controls in Design view, see.

Turn on/off snapping to gridlines If snapping to gridlines is enabled, when you drag an element on the artboard, the element tends to align with the closest horizontal and vertical gridlines. Turn on/off snapping to snaplines Snaplines help you align controls relative to each other. If snapping to snaplines is enabled, when you drag a control relative to other controls, alignment boundaries appear when the edges and the text of some controls are aligned horizontally or vertically. An alignment boundary appears as a red-dashed line.

What does the designer need to consider when designing for the Ultrabook desktop? • Touchable: This is where the controls are sized large enough to function appropriately in a touch only environment, which research has shown to be a minimum of 23 x 23 pixels (6 mm) and have sufficient room between controls to prevent accidental selection. • Touch-enabled: Most frequently used controls are at least 40x40 pixels (10 mm), and the standard relevant gestures of touch targets are supported such as panning, pinch and zoom, and rotation.

Microsoft has incorporated a gallery of add-ins into Visual Studio 2010 through the Extension Manager on the Tools menu. If you're a Visual Studio 2008 developer, you can find the Visual Studio Gallery tools at bit.ly/dxCqnl. While it's worth browsing through that list to see what interests you, it's very long. Here are some of the best tools from the Gallery, plus a few add-ins that can't be found in the Microsoft listing.

Grid adorners A Grid adorner appears as a triangle that has a vertical or horizontal line attached to it on the Grid rail. When you drag a Grid adorner, the widths or heights of adjacent columns or rows update as you move the mouse. Grid adorners are used to control the width and height of a Grid's rows and columns. You can add a new column or row by clicking in the Grid rails. When you add a new row or column line for a Grid panel that has two or more columns or rows, a mini-toolbar appears outside of the rail that enables you to set width and height explicitly.

This requires an understanding of the animation and timing system in WPF and extensive coding expertise. You create animations visually and can preview them in Blend for Visual Studio. This is faster and more accurate than building your animations in code. You can add triggers to handle user interaction, and you can switch to code to add event handlers and other functionality. Turn shapes and text into paths for easier manipulation Not supported.

Basic multi-touch manipulations are implemented and behave as expected. • Touch-optimized: The content has been revisited to minimize clutter and maximize user experience. Tasks are performed using controls strategically placed in easy-to-access areas on the screen.

The Objects and Timeline panel doubles as the place where controls can be included in a storyboard animation. Animations in Blend are accomplished by defining an end state, where controls can be moved, sized, and changed as needed. A starting state can also be defined, but if it isn’t, the animated object will go from its present state towards the end state according to the storybook, regardless of where it starts. That means that if a control is midway thru an animation when a new storyboard is triggered, instead of completing the current storyboard first or resetting to the beginning, the control will continue to animate towards it’s end state. The resulting XAML that is created as a result of this is stored in the XAML file’s resource section.

Xaml Design Tools

Use Adobe artwork Not supported. Import Adobe FXG, PhotoShop, or Illustrator artwork and implement the UI in Blend for Visual Studio. Edit controls, templates, and styles Requires coding and knowledge of WPF styles and templates. Turn any image into a control. Use the template editing tools to make changes to controls, styles, and templates with just a few mouse clicks. For example, you can use Blend for Visual Studio style resources to implement common WPF controls (such as buttons, list boxes, scroll bars, menus, etc.), and change their color, style, or underlying template directly in Blend for Visual Studio. You can then switch to code for finishing touches if you want.

Install Xaml Designer

Grid rails Grid rails are used to manage rows and columns in a panel. You can create and delete rows and columns, and you can adjust their relative widths and heights. The vertical Grid rail, which appears on the left of the artboard, is used for rows, and the horizontal line, which appears at the top, is used for columns.

• Explains how to work with the Theme Editor in a task-based manner. • Describes the appearance and functionality of various user interface elements.

In this article we’ll explore some of the tools that you can use to design great touch experiences for the desktop and how to build reusable assets as part of the process. Specifically we will look at the Expression suite of tools for building applications that are responsive to the environments in which they run. The key is to identify how you work and pick the tools that make the most sense. Designer and Developer workflow The big question facing application teams is how to make the transition and communication between developers and designers as easy as possible. In many cases the developer is the defacto designer and may have little or no formal training in the field, but will apply what they’ve learned about interface design to their development projects. When a formal design role is included in a project team, the person who fills that role has the unique challenge of communicating their design intent to the developer who implements it. The tools available to designers include things like the Adobe toolset (Photoshop*, Illustrator*, etc.) and other design tools that fit their work patterns.

SMTP4Dev is a little SMTP server that runs in your system tray and accepts e-mail messages from your application. It has a simple UI for reviewing and deleting the e-mail generated by your application. And that's all. I've been using SMTP4Dev for a couple of years now, whenever I need to test an app that sends e-mail. SMTP4Dev is simple to install and run -- just download the EXE, drop it somewhere and launch it. One warning: the SMTP4Dev UI has an Inspect button that, when I click it to find out what it does, causes SMTP4Dev to crash. I've stopped clicking on that button.