A screencast on what's new on WPF Designer "Cider" beta2...

A belated follow-up to an earlier post about Cider...    Will try for a brief series that discusses:

  1. What's new in Beta2 ... (  lotsa new features, check details below )
  2. How to build a WPF app using Cider AND Blend ...  ( sweet spots for each tool,  brief demo of the workflow) ..
  3. Cider extensibility and features for control hosting, design-time, etc..

The 'features' screencast is available from Channel 9. It is ~10 mins of features  + 10 mins building sample app.. 
Some of the new features in the screencast you should watch out for: 

  • IDE/project stuff:
    • Templates for WPF apps  (no more extensions)
    • Remembers my preferences on how to always open a XAML file; if I choose Design Surface or XAML editor it remembers (per file-per-project)
    • User control support
    • Property windows, categories, etc.
    • Wiring up events from the designer ... One click :) 
  • Layout
    • Grid support with adorners
    • Panels ( StackPanel, DockPanel, etc.)
    • Snaplines
    • Guideline adorners for alignment
  • Navigation
    • Selection Sync  ( Designer, editor, property window are always in sync.. )
    • Document Outline
      • Visual Preview
  • XAML Editor
    • Reflection based intellisense ...  (yes, that means non-schema based)
    • Intellisense for mapping  xml namespaces
    • Sync selection from within the editor
    • Better perf than previous build..
    • Navigate to event handler

Please check the screencast,  and let me know if I missed some thing you like..  If there is some thing you don't like, provide feedback...