Blending Headaches, and More

Don’t get me wrong, Blend 3 has made life a lot easier for designer/developers. However I hope by Blend vNext the following are fixed:

• “Object reference not set to an instance of an object”. Anyone have a good idea of how to figure out what is generating these error messages. It’s clear from Blend what XAML is the issue, but it’s a lot harder to find the .NET issue that is related to the error message – in my case it was somewhere inside the DataGridTemplateColumn.CellTemplate
  DataTemplate XAML. A stack trace would be nice Yeh I know I can attach VS to the Blend process, but still, it could be easier.
• “Invalid XAML” Still not sure why I see this in Blend 3, yet VS 2008 is fine, and the XAML compiles. The error occurs when referencing a usercontrol in a folder via an xmlns attribute.
• The most annoying problem I’ve recently had is the inability to select the Edit Additional Templates/Edit ColumnHeaderStyle/Edit a Copy on a silverlight datagrid I can access this option in a new Blend 3 solution, yet when I load my VS 2008 Prism solution, for some reason the option is grey’d out

A debate that appears to have various views in the designer/developer world is the “who should go first in XAML?” question. Essentially from a UX perspective, from sketch/wireframes should the designer build the XAML UI in Blend, and let the developer bind in as they begin to build the ViewModel/Model (MVVM), or should the developer build a rough XAML to allow them to get the MVVM up and running, forcing the designer to come onto the XAML later? I have one view, I heard similar views at the UK Silverlight launch event (previously blogged).

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~ by mdavey on August 29, 2009.