A Valuable Tool for WPF and Silverlight

Working with WPF & Silverlight is really great!

The only problem if you use it in production is how you quickly generate new views. They don't need any animations or other stuff, just plain details views.

You could do it with Expression Blend or the Visual Studio WPF Designer, still it would take more time than doing it directly in XAML..

But.. Who is interested in writing 30 or so views in XAML ?!

There is a better solution: XAML Powertoys.

XAML Powertoys are a bunch of Visual Studio 2008 additions which really ease your daily work with XAML (either in WPF or in Silverlight).

Let's say you have an entity Person and you want to create a list view for it.

Just select "Create Form, ListView,.." in the "XAML Power Toys" context menu within the XAML designer.
image 

Next you select the type..

image

Next you can select the type of UI you want to create (either form, WPF ListView or the new DataGrid control).

image

You can select the participating data fields from the class and configure how they are bound, etc...

That's it.. The XAML is automatically created and copied into your clipboard. Just paste it at the corresponding position and your UI is ready!

> Get the XAML PowerToys here.

But don't forget to add the install-path to trusted Add-In paths under Tools-Options:

image