If you've worked with XAML in Visual Studio 2008 (SP1), either for WPF or Silverlight work, you know how painful it is.
Of course, the first thing to do is to get rid of the design view. It's slow as a snail and it's pretty useless anyway.
Make yourself a favor, and check "Always open documents in full XAML view" in "Tools | Options | Text Editor | XAML | Miscellaneous".
Even if this a great improvement, you'll soon realize that Visual Studio still sucks up a lot of your time and energy when you switch to a XAML file in the text editor. The same happens when you switch back to Visual Studio from another application. Now, try to open two XAML files side-by-side and the time to display them doubles. Same thing when you switch between two XAML files.
What the heck, there's gotta be a solution to this damnation! How could we develop good WPF or Silverlight applications if this XAML editor keeps getting on our nerves?
I've been enduring this for a long time. I had tried to edit the XAML file as an XML file, but this disabled IntelliSense, for some reason. So the XML editor was not an option.
Microsoft doesn't seem to be in a hurry to provide a fix... Luckily, today I found an unexpected solution: use the "Source Code (Text) Editor". It doesn't seem obvious based on its name, but this editor provides XAML IntelliSense, XML collapsing, and the XAML context menu.
To use this, it's quite simple:
- Right-click on a XAML file in the Solution Explorer
- Select "Open With..."
- Select "Source Code (Text) Editor"
- Click on "Set as Default"
- Click OK
- You're done!
The cherry on the cake: If you want to use the default XAML editor (with its split view, navigator, etc.), you just have to select "View Designer" in the text editor's context menu or use SHIFT+F7.
Enjoy your newly gained life!
Update: If you experience crashes when editing XAML files, this hot fix may help.
RunAtServer Consulting and Octo Technology are organizing a 3-day Silverlight 2 training in Paris and in French. Highly recommended.
Il s'agit du Silverlight Tour, qui fait exceptionnellement une halte en France. La formation sera assurée par Laurent Duveau, un français qui a émigré au Québec et que j'ai rencontré à Montréal à l'occasion de l'événement DevTeach. Laurent connait bien son sujet et le programme de la formation annonce trois jours bien fournis sur Silverlight. Attention, cette formation a lieu du 19 au 21 janvier prochains. L'inscription se fait par là.
Speaking about DevTeach, our sessions in Montreal with Fred were well received and I enjoyed being a speaker there. If you want to experience DevTeach by yourself, here is an interesting offer:
You can save 50% on the price of DevTeach/SQLTeach Vancouver (June 8-12,2009)!
DevTeach has created a secret rebate code that will give you 50% off the regular price for the event. You will not find this code on the DevTeach or SQLTeach site. It has been given to only friends of the event to be posted in Blogs and sent by email. Plus, this code can only be used 30 times and expires on February 10th.
The rebate code is DEVT50OFFVAN