Designer Functionality not working.

WPF Studio, Themes, and Shared Library for WPF Forum

Posted 2 years ago by keepITcool - Amsterdam
Version: 22.1.4
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I'm using VS Community 2022 Latest version: 17.5.3 (64-bit) on a Win11 (22H2) computer.
My xaml designer functions work fine on default WPF controls, but I can't get any designer functionality on Actipro controls, from any of the assemblies.

I've read troubleshooting. (Documentation/troubleshooting.html#designer-functionality-not-working)
I've tried SampleBrowser, c# wpfapp (Framework), vb wpfapp (Framework)
I've tried Nuget and Local reference assemblies... even tried adding references to the Designer assemblies (plus Windows.Design.Extensibility)


What am I missing? 


Comments (4)

Posted 2 years ago by Actipro Software Support - Cleveland, OH, USA
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I just tested our controls with VS Community 2022 and they work as expected. The "as expected" is a phrase with caveats, though, because there are two variants of designer functionality.

The advanced designer interaction we provided with our tools was for .NET Framework and worked up through VS 2019.  With VS 2022, Microsoft changed everything and the old designer functionality no longer worked. We ported some core functionality to the new DesignTools model, but not the more advanced tooling with custom dialogs and actions.

For .NET Framework up through VS 2019, you should see the most advanced designer functionality.

For VS 2022, the designer functionality is more limited. Most products will help populate the description of properties in the Properties window. Some, like Bar Code, will provide custom actions on the context menu of a BarCode control.

I suspect that when you say you "can't get any designer functionality" you are referring to the older designer functionality that is no longer available on VS 2022 that you are using.  If you can reply with specifics of what you are looking for that is not working as you'd expect, I can confirm if that is the case.


Actipro Software Support

Posted 2 years ago by keepITcool - Amsterdam
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You really should document this in your Troubleshooting.

Any plans to fully implement Designer functionality for the current version of VS.. which was released over a year ago?
Sorry to sound grumpy, but I'm disappointed.



Posted 2 years ago by keepITcool - Amsterdam
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btw... how can i upload screenshots? 

Posted 2 years ago by Actipro Software Support - Cleveland, OH, USA
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I understand the disappointment. We were disappointed, as well, after pouring so many hours into providing rich designer support only to have it all deprecated by changes in the VS designer APIs.  We understand why Microsoft had to make the change, but porting to the new API's was not going to be a simple task.  In our interactions with users, we found the vast majority never used the designers anyway and worked with XAML directly.  Those who use MVVM (which is widely popular) also rarely benefit from any designer-based functionality.

Ultimately, we decided to limit our investment in designer-specific functionality and focus our efforts on ensuring our controls work with the default XAML designer surface.

When responding to your post yesterday, we also recognized that our existing documentation on designer support needs to be updated to indicate compatibility changes with Visual Studio versions.  Updating the troubleshooting topic is a great suggestion, so thank you for sharing that as well. We tend to update the troubleshooting topic in response to common or frequent support inquiries, and the more limited designer functionality in VS 2022 is, quite honestly, just not something users have been asking about even though, as you noted, VS 2022 has been out for a while now.

I know this is disappointing. We get that. If you can share which product you are using and which designer functionality you are looking for in VS 2022, we can include your feedback on the development roadmap as we prioritize new work.

Regarding screenshots, those currently aren't directly supported by the forums, but you can always post a link to an image from a third-party sharing service. Alternatively, you can submit a ticket to our support address with any attachments and include a link to this post in the email.


Actipro Software Support

The latest build of this product (v24.1.3) was released 2 months ago, which was after the last post in this thread.

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