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Asked: 2026-05-23T18:16:31+00:00

I am looking at using WPF for the GUI side of an upcoming project.

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I am looking at using WPF for the GUI side of an upcoming project.

I know I have a huge decision to make on WPF vs. Win forms, but before I can make that decision I want to have a play around with a few simple WPF programs.

I have read a few posts online that say Visual Studio (2008 at the time of the post) lacked somewhat in editing the XAML and they recommended using MS Expression?

Questions are:-
I have VS2010, Has this fixed the lacklustre XAML editing present in VS2008?
Which product in Expression studio is used instead to edit the XAML?
Is the idea that you build the code side of the WPF in VS and Build up the XAML in Expression the copy the generated XAML into VS?

Any suggestions/tips on combining Expression and VS2010 would be appreciated.

Kind Regards

Ash

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    VS2010 has a much better enviroment for supporting XAML compared to VS2008 (in VS2008 it really was not the greatest experience) – so it would be possible to play around with some basic projects straight in VS2010…

    Expression Blend really shows it power when you get into animations and transitions etc (Expression Blend to me would be the starting space in the Expression suite once you had covered the basics in VS2010).

    The approach I would take is to get basic exposure in a tool/ide you are used to like VS2010, and then go through some of the Blend examples/tutorials that are available off the Expression Website to then take it to the next level.

    The things that got me sold on WPF/Silverlight were databinding, separation of concerns using the MVVM pattern and commanding… it just seemed easier than what I was achieving in the winforms arena and cleaner… but it took a while before I was sold on it just because I was used to the winforms way of things and was trying to do WPF but with a Winforms approach.

    For basic projects you could build the code and XAML all directly in VS2010. In fact for someone learning XAML for the first time who comes from a code centric perspective, coding XAML directly in VS2010 might be beneficial so that you get used to the basic syntax before you work in a tool like Expression Blend where that can be hidden from the developer.

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