How to work with XAML editor in Visual Studio 2010?

Question

I've worked with Visual Studio 2008 and editing XAML was really painful because the designer reloaded very slowly. Now I have installed Visual Studio 2010 and it seems to me that the XAML editor + Designer haven't changed much.

For example in order to force designer to change a color in my control I have to close the xaml file and open it again.

Is it just my problem?

I've tried this solution: Visual Studio 2008 Xaml Editor not working / disappeared but it didn't help.

Are there any better tools for Visual Studio to edit XAML?

Thanks!

EDIT: Compiling forces redrawing of the designer but my solution is quite large now and it takes a lot of time.

Answer 1

I run 2010 on an old core 2 duo (~1.2ghz) laptop with 4gb of memory and the xaml editor is fine.

If you've got a MASSIVE xaml document you might want to think about breaking it into user controls to simplify the document. Also, think about the machine you're running. If it doesn't have at least 3gb of memory you're going to be fighting with the disk. Memory is cheap, make sure you have as much as possible.

Answer 2

I didn't experience the same problem, instead I saw that Visual Studio 2010 is faster than its previous version to load a XAML into the designer.
Btw, I suggest you to show only the XAML, either collapsing the designer window or pressing ESC during the loading: the first time is slow, but other times is faster.
Hope this helps.

Answer 3

If you can, get hold of Expression. For Visual Studio 2008 it was a much better visual XAML editor.

I know a lot of what it does was incorporated into Visual Studio 2010, so there might not be a lot of difference between the two now.