Speeding up XAML editing in VS2008

Question

When editing XAML in VS2008 SP1, the editor is really slow. devenv process seems to be around at 40% CPU (the machine I’m using at the moment is only dual core, so that’s almost maxing out one core) most of the time. It spikes up a bit more when I switch to another XAML file. I do also have ReSharper installed, but I think I’d rather put up with the slowness than remove that :)

Any suggestions on how I can speed things up a bit?

Edited to add: I'm already using the Xaml only view, which did speed it up from what I remember - but it's still to sluggish. Also, the Xaml files aren't massive - only 100 to 200 lines.

Answer 1

Maybe you can edit the XAML file outside Visual Studio. Use tools like:

• XamlPadX 4
• Kaxaml

Answer 2

You can speed it up a lot by only viewing the XML view. Tools / Options / Text Editor / XAML / Always open documents in full XAML view (check this box).

Answer 3

It looks like the slowdown is due to ReSharper. From a bit more Googling I found that pressing Ctrl+8 will turn ReSharper off for the current file (Ctrl+8 again to turn it back on). If I do this for the slow Xaml files, my problems pretty much go away (and I don’t mind not having ReSharper for Xaml)

Update: The 4.1 release of ReSharper seems to have fixed the performance problem, so I no longer need to use the Ctrl+8 shortcut.

Answer 4

I found that this hotfix solved a major lagging and stuttering issue I was having.

https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/Downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?DownloadID=10826

Before simply scrolling or editing a tag in my xaml would cause a 5-10 second pause in VS2008. This hotfix seemed to remedy most of it; not it only pauses after save and loading xaml files.