New XAML Tools in Visual Studio 2015 and Blend | Visual Studio Toolbox

[News]

In this episode, Seth Juarez guest hosts and is joined by Unni Ravindranathan, who shows off many of the improvements in XAML tooling in both Visual Studio 2015 and Blend for Visual Studio 2015. Some of these improvements are specific to Windows Universal Apps, but many are available to all XAML developers.

Among the features Unni shows and discusses are

• a redesigned and more streamlined Blend [02:00]
• a much faster and more robust editing experience as a result of rewriting the XAML language service using Roslyn and decoupling the language service from the designer [18:25]
• inline peek definition in XAML enabling you to both view and edit code and XAML [20:20]
• support for regions in XAML [24:25]
• the Live Visual Tree and Live Property Explorer, which provide the ability to explore your object hierarchy and modify properties while debugging [26:45]
• the Timeline Tool, which provides you with the ability to profile the performance of a XAML application [31:00]

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