Although Blend provides the strongest tooling for design
including the features we’ve seen like animations and visual state
manager support, at times switching to Blend is unnecessary for smaller
layout and property changes. Starting in Visual Studio 2012, the XAML
designer is powered by Blend’s design surface.
If you start with a new project, your XAML is shown in a split view, as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Showing just the Design View
In this split view, you can simply double-click the designer Icon
(where the arrow is pointing) to show only the design view (which I find
easier). After you have the design view opened, you can see the
Properties pane is similar to the Blend pane (in that it’s collapsible
and uses the same editors as Blend), as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2. The Blend-like Property Pane in Visual Studio
The missing piece here for most of the Blend-like design is the
Objects and Timeline pane. In Visual Studio this is called the Document
Outline. As Visual Studio can’t do animations. You can click the
dedicated Document Outline button to show this pane (see Figure 3).
Figure 3. Showing the Document Outline
When you have this view, you can simply work with the design surface
exactly like you would in Blend. The underlying code for this design
surface is the same one used in Blend. For example, you can simply
right-click the ApplicationBar section of the Document Outline to add an
ApplicationBar to your design, as shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4. Adding an ApplicationBar in Visual Studio
So for those simple XAML changes, Visual Studio can be a faster way to modify your design.
