Cider May CTP Release Notes

Welcome to the May Community Technology Preview of Cider, the Visual Designer for the Windows Presentation Foundation. This is our fourth public release, and is an incremental improvement over the February CTP Based on feedback we’ve received from customers, we’ve increased our focus on Quality for this CTP. Our existing features should be much higher quality and provide you with a much better experience of using Cider to get started on WPF app development.

As in previous ""CTPs"", this release of Cider supports basic "form" creation and "XAML Preview" in addition to some minor feature additions covered later in this doc.

Please give us your feedback!

Let us know what you like and what you don't like. What are the things that are missing today that stop you from using Cider? What are your "must have" features? Stop by and give us feeback on the MSDN forum for Cider

What's New in the May CTP

Since the last CTP, our primary focus has been on improving the overall quality of our existing features. But we have managed to also include some new functionality that many customers expressed a desire to see. The major things you should expect to see in this CTP are:
* Delete Key support! You can now delete items from your design surface.
* Support for basic Cut, Copy, and Paste.
* Much improved Grid Layout Experience. This includes better layout support and better feedback on control creation and manipulation within the Grid.
* Much improved XAML Parsing and Rendering support. We’ve significantly increased the amount of XAML we currently support. (Note: There are still some limitations you should expect to see with our XAML Load support.)
* Support for 64bit Operating Systems.
* We’ve implemented Quality improvements and bug fixes for features like Undo, Redo, Toolbox operations, and our low level designer architecture.

Features Missing from the May CTP

Because of our focus on improving overall product quality for this CTP, we made the decision to remove some functionality from this CTP. This is functionality that existed in our previous ""CTPs"". Many of these features will be added back in future CTP releases when we’re confident that they meet the level of quality our customers expect. The features you’ll most notice missing from this CTP are:
* Document Outline support.
* Zoom support.
* Snap Lines.
* Support for interacting in the Designer w/ container controls other than Grid. i.e., you cannot manipulate controls inside ""StackPanel"", ""DockPanel"", or ""Canvas"" on the Designer. You can however update properties for these controls via XAML or the Property Browser.

Known Issues in the May CTP

* Our XAML Parser is not complete, so there are still some XAML Load Limitations that we have in this CTP.
* The May CTP does not work with Express editions of Visual Studio 2005. We are considering this for later ""CTPs"".

Uninstalling the February CTP

Before you install the May CTP please make sure you uninstall the February CTP or any previous Cider ""CTPs"".

Installing the May CTP

The Cider May CTP requires the Beta2 or May CTP releases of other components. And, of course, you'll need Visual Studio 2005
* WinFX Runtime Components Beta2
* Visual Studio 'Orcas' May CTP (which includes Cider)

Uninstalling the May 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."

Both of these options will leave intact the original functionality of Visual Studio 2005.