I hate it when a designer touches XAML..

I’ve meet with a few die-hard Silverlight developers in my time and some feedback I get at times is how designers produce bad XAML.

“..I hate it when a designer touches XAML..” – oh? why?

My first thought was, “bad XAML?” how on earth can a designer produce bad XAML. *confused look*

After digging I find out that one of the pet hates is that the designer doesn’t name their controls properly or that they’ll use a rectangle instead of a grid/canvas etc to visually represent the UI.

I then hold up my hand and say “stop”.

Here’s the lesson folks.

Expression Studio and Visual Studio allow you to collaborate with designers and developers. We’ve made it so you majority of the time never need to look at how the tools generate XAML as it just works. That all being said, it ENABLES you to work together, you still need to WORK together.

Meaning, setup rules of engagement with one another. Tell your designer that you need certain User Controls for certain contexts. You expect a clear naming convention and so on. Let the designer execute their creative vision and don’t impose too many rules on them as you could starve the process of creative flow but agree on how the pipeline will work UPFRONT.

Don’t expect the tools to automate your communication between developer and designer, as to do that would be a one neat trick.

Word for today: Communication.