XAML Intellisense

I’ve done a little here and there with WPF over the past few years. Nothing of production quality, but still a bit more than just “playing with it”. One of the things that bugged the hell out of me was that I couldn’t figure out how to get Intellisense to kick in while working with the XAML (I rarely use the designer). Lately I’ve been getting back into WPF a bit more deeply and when you start designing more complicated UI, you really need to have XAML Intellisense, otherwise you have to keep looking stuff up!

So, I Googled around for an answer and finally found something after many search attempts. And wow, it’s soooooo simple! Here’s where I found the answer, and I want to sincerely thank Fabrice for posting this: http://weblogs.asp.net/fmarguerie/archive/2009/01/29/life-changer-xaml-tip-for-visual-studio.aspx

Basically, what Fabrice says is to use the Source Code Editor rather than the XML editor. That’s it in a nutshell and it’s one of those forehead-slapping, duh, why-didn’t-I-think-of-that kind of things!

You can read Fabrice’s blog, but here are his 6 easy steps:

1. Right-click on a XAML file in the Solution Explorer
2. Select "Open With..."
3. Select "Source Code (Text) Editor"
4. Click on "Set as Default"
5. Click OK
6. You're done!