Comments on: Design-time Data in Expression Blend 3

By: Rob’s Tech Blog » The Curious Case of the DesignData msbuild target

Rob’s Tech Blog » The Curious Case of the DesignData msbuild target — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 18:47:58 +0000

[...] already blogged about the d:DataContext attribute, letting you set up a DataContext but only inside Blend. Another [...]

By: Rob’s Tech Blog » Design-time Data in Expression Blend 3: Revisited

Rob’s Tech Blog » Design-time Data in Expression Blend 3: Revisited — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 10:47:59 +0000

[...] designer) sees in Expression Blend is exactly what the finished product will look like? A while ago I posted about the d:DataContext attribute in Blend, and how you could leverage that to populate Blend with realistic sample data. What was awesome [...]

By: Expression Blend 3 « Code Sticks

Expression Blend 3 « Code Sticks — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 08:28:53 +0000

[...] Data in Expression Blend 3 http://www.robfe.com/2009/08/design-time-data-in-expression-blend-3/ a intresting exmaple of a simple game done in Blend [...]

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 13:55:52 +0000

Thanks for posting this

By: Rob

Rob — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 23:17:27 +0000

You should check that, because they changed the rules a while ago and Blend is included in most MSDN subscriptions, I believe. There’s a 60 day trial too – see if it speeds up your development…

Regarding your database access, I’ve done the exact same thing and you should definately give Jonas’ blog a read. Shifting your dependencies out of your viewmodel and into services will help make unit testing easier too!

By: Harshal

Harshal — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 22:32:51 +0000

Great post. Unfortunately Blend isn’t included in MSDN subscription we have at work (at least that’s what I’m told).

Another similar problem I had while doing WPF was that, if I had database code in the constructor (or even loaded method? Can’t remember), VS2008 designer tried executing it but the connection string wasn’t set up at design time and so it would break and all I’d see in XAML designer was an error.

To get around that I did something similar, Just a check if its design time and instead of running whats in the constructor just drawing a simple Rectangle of that size. But I can’t see the actual interface that way. Hoping VS2010 designer will be better.