WPF - Designer Enhancements in .NET Core 3 (v20.1)

As you may know, Visual Studio 2019 16.3 includes a new XAML Designer for WPF .NET Core. We worked closely with the Visual Studio team to address as many issues as possible and to seamlessly integrate our v19.2 WPF .NET Core control set with the new designer.

In our upcoming release (v20.1), we continue to enhance the design-time experience for those targeting the WPF .NET Core platform.

To demonstrate Visual Studio integration and designer support, we recently published the following YouTube video.

Apply application themes from App.config to all designer previews

In our new release, the theme specified in App.config is automatically applied to all the designer previews.

Select non-visual elements (Data Grid columns, Toolbar and Ribbon items) (starting with VS 2019 16.5)

If you've installed Visual Studio 16.5 and our most recent update (v20.1) you can select non-visual elements (such as a data grid's column and toolbar/ribbon item) and quickly navigate to its markup as needed. You can also switch DXTabControl tabs at design time.

Documentation and Application Theme Smart Tags

You can now navigate to the relevant help topic via smart tags. We also added a field for application theme (for root XAML elements including ThemedWindow, standard Window, UserControl, etc).

Note, that the Available themes list is based on themes installed with our Nuget packages. If you install DevExpress.WindowsDesktop.Wpf.Themes.All (a package that contains all DevExpress Themes), you can select any themes from our WPF Theme collection.

Future Plans

As you know, Microsoft continues to evolve its XAML Designer and plans to use a new designer for WPF .NET Framework projects. We don't know when the new designer will replace the current designer, but its inevitable that Microsoft will make this change.

The new designer includes a Suggested Actions menu - a menu that works like our Smart Tags. We will support Suggested Actions within our WPF controls once the Visual Studio team give us the ability to extend this element.

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