I constantly feel that designing a form layout in WPF is like designing a websites layout. Is there a tool that'll let me set things visually? I'm coming from mainly a WinForms environment and it's tiresome to spend 2 hours laying out a form design and having it not come out exactly how you want it. Tweaking numbers, etc. is very tiresome.
Is there a way for me to design things more visually, a-la WinForms?
You can use Expression Blend to design WPF forms/templates. It is nicer than the VS designer, but... it cost money.
** EDIT: I've heard that resharper has a good XAML support features, although didn't try it myself, it might help accomplish staff faster (better intellisence)
If you really want to design your forms with WPF the way you used to in WinForms, simply use a Canvas as your main container and place your controls with absolute coordinates.
I don't know if MS C# Express 2008 has a visual editor, so you don't have to tweak any number.
But by using a Canvas you loose an important feature that is resizable forms. If you position your controls absolutely, there is no way to adapt the content to the window size.
That is where WPF has things in common to designing websites, but with more flexibility. You have to learn all the available panels and when to use them. My favorite is DockPanel often used as to topmost panel. Then you nest different panels to build your form.
There are usually very few dimensions to set. I mostly set MinWidth for columns or MinHeight for rows. Each control has its margins set in styles, so everything layouts smoothly.
If you have a concrete problem to layout, I'll be happy to assist you.
Use Expression Blend as Dani mentioned. You can have the same solution opened in VS as well as in EB at the same time, as they can share files well. This approach was desiged to help separate designers and programmers work, but keep code common.
The point is that the best intrinsic features of Wpf aren't easily manageable via any visual way. If you prefer a WYSIWYG way, then you may use WinForms.
The real different approach within Wpf is the functional way, i.e. templates and those feature are hard to manage with a visual editor.
I always have used Visual Studio Express + Xaml and there is not anything will stop you.