Disabling the Designer when editing XAML

Many of us prefer to disable the designer when editing XAML, mostly for performance reasons. If you experience a big delay when opening and even making changes to XAML files, you might want to disable the designer. Of course if you use the designer, this fix is not for you.

To disable the designer, make sure there are no XAML files open on VS 2010:

1 – Right click on a XAML file on solution explorer

2 – Select “Open with…” from context menu

3 – Select “Source Code (Text) Editor”

4 – Click on “Set as Default” button

Mario Done!

This doesn't really "disable" anything, because you can always right click and "Open With..." to open the file with the designer.

@Mauricio Feijo: You can also just collapse the designer piece of the window and it won't open the next time.

@spivonious:It will not open the designer but it will still execute. When using complex frameworks this is very clear, as the IDE UI locks up until designer work is complete. Just test it for yourself, get 5 large, heavily templated files and open them, with the designer tab collapsed. Save all and close VS. Then reopen VS and time how long it takes until you can edit text. Then close them all, change the default, reopen them al, save again and test again.

@wkempf: Id say it is a matter of semantics. This allows developers to have all XAML intellisense and coloring without the overhead of the designer, which many developers rarely use.