WPF Which IDE to go for?

Question

Hi,

just wondering what IDE people use for their WPF apps?

I currently have VS2008 + VS2010 (RC) and MS Expression Blend 3 installed on my system. I'm just wondering what is the best way to go about WPF apps?

Could I create in Blend and then edit the source in VS or vice versa?

Ideas would be great and info on how everyone else does it would be great.

Thanks

Answer 1

In our shop, we use VS2k8 and blend. we do most of our design in blend. and the coding and some of the design in vs2k8. One drawback of using blend is the lack of integration with VSS or TFS. We are going to be using 2k10 when it goes RTW.

Answer 2

You may need both VS and Blend if you do more of a UX layer WPF development, which means you create basic control layout in Blend and then do the code-behind(or ViewModel C#/VB.NET) in VS. I usually keep VS on one monitor and blend on the second.

Now come to the version of the above IDEs. Of course the newer version has great power. So Blend4.0(currently in Beta) has better TFS integration so you can do check-in/checkout from Blend itself and also able to do an extend of C# editing also. And VS2010 is really powerfull IDE as compared to VS2008, and you might be able to do a lot of basic XAML editing in VS2010 itself, for some WPF developers who doesn't do much XAML design VS2010 will be the sole tool to do all his needs.