WPF: Do VS 2010 and Blend 4 really integrate well?

Question

I'm new to WPF, so this is my first project.

I started with the coding side of things using VS. I am overall pretty satisfied with the way VS is used to build a WPF app, however a big part of WPF is also animation.

So to my relief, I was able to open the solution I created using VS 2010, in Expression Blend 4.

I opened it, but then I noticed the form design view in Blend 4. My heart sank. Please don't tell me WPF 4 is still so immature as a product that you cannot yet work decently with WPF projects created in VS 2010?

See the screen shots:

Here is good old VS 2010 form design view. As you can see there is a menu and a label control on the form.

Here on the other hand is the same form open in Blend 4:

As you can see, no design time support it seems for ANY existing elements. The form besides being black, seems to not contain my menu or label.

Have I done something wrong, or is Blend this immature?

My course of action seems to be learning the XAML and using pure VS 2010 for animation, but that means that Blend 4 would be a failed product in my eyes.

Update:

Here is the full screen , so this is after opening the MainWindow.xaml in Blend 4.

Answer 1

Ok well I figured it out.

I am guessing its also a bug in Blend 4.

In VS 2010 my Window visibility was initially hidden, this is because I have a custom splash screen which first loads, then sets the visibility to true.

So design mode imo of Blend should not pay attention to the Windows visibility property, this is a run time property really.

Setting the visibility to true of the form / window. and the results are better.