Where is the Xap file content viewer in Visual Studio?

Question

Where can I find following viewer within Visual Studio?

Answer 1

That's Silverlight Spy, which you can get from here: http://firstfloorsoftware.com/silverlightspy. It's a commercial product, but it has a trial period. If you're doing any hard core Silverlight development it's almost a must have tool.

Alternatively, you can do it the hard way (although it's not too hard in the scheme of things), and change the XAP file's .xap extension to .zip and unzip it. To make this process easier, you can associate the .xap extension with your zip tool, enabling you to browse the contents of a .xap file right within the zip tool. Of course, that doesn't provide all the other additional features that Silverlight Spy includes :).

Also note, Silverlight Spy is not an extension or add-in to Visual Studio - it's an external application.

Hope this helps...

Chris