Cider December CTP Release Notes

Welcome to the December Community Technology Preview of Cider, the Visual Designer for the Windows Presentation Foundation. This is our first public release, and we're very excited to get it out to you! That said, this is the first time we've pulled together the designer and there are quite a few rough edges in addition to many just plain unfinished pieces of business.

This release of Cider supports very basic functionality associated with creating a WPF Form, adding simple controls to the form, moving and sizing them, and setting properties on the controls. At this early stage, the designer is not sufficient to create WPF applications without the developer also manipulating XAML. If you are building WPF applications, you are accustomed to XAML, and the designer can really help you out. Not only will it augment your experience by allowing a "preview" scenario for your markup and by providing basic visual manipulation, it will also accurately preserve XAML format through switches between the XAML editor and the visual designer.

Other components in the CTP provide project system and build system support for WPF applications, so you can build and debug your applications. There are also project templates to create new WPF applications, and an XSD to provide guidance and validation when you're editing XAML.

Installing the December CTP

The Cider December CTP requires the December CTP releases of other components. And, of course, you'll need Visual Studio 2005.
* WinFX Runtime Components December CTP
* Windows SDK December CTP
* Visual Studio 'Orcas' December CTP (which includes Cider)

Note the December CTP does not work with Express editions of Visual Studio 2005. This will be improved in later CTPs.

Uninstalling the December CTP

Well, if you're "done" with Cider, or you've found a bug that is blocking your work, you have several options.

If you just don't want the designer to come up when you double-click a XAML file, you can right-click on the XAML file in the Solution Explorer, select "Open With…", then select the XML Editor and check the "Set as default" option. This will cause the XAML file to always open in the XML editor.

If there's some huge problem that you cannot work around and you cannot change the XAML file association, you can uninstall the entire Visual Studio "Orcas" CTP. Go to "Add/Remove Programs" and uninstall something that looks like the "Visual Studio Code Name 'Orcas' Community Technology Preview - WinFX Development Tools."

Overview

The Cider December CTP is focused on 3 main areas:

DecemberCTPScenarioAvalonPreview	When you edit the XAML content for your window or page, you can see it rendered immediately in the Cider Design View. No need to run or debug your app, or use ""XAMLPad""; you can stay in VS and check out your UI.
DecemberCTPScenarioXAMLRoundtripping	The Cider Designer will cleanly roundtrip your XAML between design and source views. Cider will not cause unrequested changes to your XAML as part of rendering the design or making changes in the design view. It will leave all your XAML intact and preserve comments and whitespace.
DecemberCTPScenarioBasicDesign	The Cider Design View has some very basic toolbox, layout, selection, and property editing functionality. This is a minimum bar to help you start creating Avalon applications, and includes the ability to continue to handle simple demo scenarios and samples.