Cider Compatibility?
On the weekend I installed beta 2 of Visual C# Express 2008. This is the first time I've had a hands-on go of .NET 3.5 or VS 2008, and from my brief look on Saturday it looks great. Not too different visually from Visual Studio 2005, but hey - when you're on a good thing, stick to it.
The current version of Comicster compiled just fine, but the newer, WPF version had some issues. While it compiled, I couldn't open the main form in the XAML form designer (code-named "Cider"). I just got the new "White Screen of Darn" where it tells you that the form couldn't be displayed. This is obviously due to my hand-coding the XAML rather than using a visual designer from scratch, but it leaves me with something of a conundrum:
Do I restart the main form's design from scratch using Cider, so that I know I have a level of compatibility with the visual form designer? Or do I abandon the current form designer and continue with my (possibly incorrect but still working) hand-coded XAML?
Both options have merit. I don't know exactly what it is with my current form that stops it from loading in the designer, but it could be anything. I'm thinking it's probably something to do with references to templates, styles and code-based template selectors in other files within the project.
Anyone else had enough hands-on experience with Cider to have an opinion one way or the other?
Comments
# andrew
30/07/2007 12:33 PM
It wouldn't make any sense to start from scratch, but just copy and paste your code in till you get to a point where it errors, so you know?
I mean start with the outer containers and then insert the code that does the inner containers.
Although I guess that's a lot of work when you consider templates, etc.
That's just from the point of view of figuring out what you did wrong by hand, though.
If I was doing it (hears roars of laughter from Mabs) I'd go with redoing it, solely because it'll save you time rewriting it, and prototyping parts in the future, wouldn't it?
# mabster
30/07/2007 12:40 PM
Yeah, it's the ease with which I could make minor adjustments that draws me to the visual designer. The idea of bringing it across piecemeal until it errors is worth pursuing.
# Mark Wilson-Thomas (MSFT)
8/08/2007 11:29 AM
Hi
Just to let you know that the problem loading in the WPF designer which mabster was seeing is due to Comicster2 using the Hyperlink.RequestNavigate bubble-up handler method for the Hyperlinked ListBoxes.
We have a bug in the version of the WPF designer in Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 which means it does not correctly handle this syntax; sorry that you've hit this. We're looking into getting it fixed.
Thanks to all who are trying out Beta 2; please do submit your feedback and issues on the Cider forums (forums.microsoft.com/.../ShowForum.aspx) - we're all ears!
Regards
Mark Wilson-Thomas
Program Manager
WPF Designer in Visual Studio 2008
(formerly "Cider")