[This topic is pre-release documentation and is subject to change in future releases of Microsoft Silverlight.]

The Silverlight Designer Preview

Introduction

The Silverlight Tools Beta 1 for Visual Studio 2008 includes support for creating applications in Silverlight version 2 Beta 1. The Silverlight Designer Preview in Visual Studio 2008 has features that are a subset of the features in the WPF Designer. 

Supported Features

The following table lists the features that are supported in the Silverlight Designer Preview for Silverlight 2 Beta 1 projects.

Feature

Notes

Full XAML editing is supported.

IntelliSense and XAML formatting is the same as in the WPF Designer's XAML editor, except that Silverlight 2 Beta 1 types are targeted instead of WPF types.

Design view displays a read-only WYSIWYG visual preview.

Allows the developer to preview work before running it. Design view supports zoom.

Split view with Design view and XAML view is supported.

Silverlight 2 Beta 1 controls and corresponding icons are displayed in the Toolbox.

Silverlight 2 Beta 1 controls are displayed alphabetically in a tab on the Toolbox.

The Toolbox with drag-and-drop support for XAML view is supported.

Useful for adding Silverlight 2 Beta 1 controls from non-default namespaces. When a control is added, a reference and the namespace are added automatically.

The Document Outline window and tag navigator are available when editing XAML.

Navigation features for interacting with the code are supported.

Auto-update between XAML view and other WPF Designer components is supported.

Errors are reported in the Error List window.

XAML with errors causes the Last Known Good view to be displayed until valid XAML is entered.

Unsupported Features

The following table lists the features that are not supported in the Silverlight Designer Preview for Silverlight 2 Beta 1 projects.

Feature

Notes

Modifications in Design view are not supported.

Selecting controls, moving controls, adding items from the Toolbox, and other Design view features are not supported.

The Properties window is not supported.

Globalization features are not supported.

Automatic resource reloading is not supported.

Changes to resources that are contained in other files require a rebuild before they are visible in the loaded XAML.