The problem
Expression Blend has been out in the wild for quite some time. However one of the most annoying thing was the lack of autocompletion (aka IntelliSense). Most of devs/designers out there were constantly switching from Blend to VS and backwards to do their stuff. The great free tool Kaxaml is at great help as well.
The solution
Using the Blend 2.5 add-ins architecture I have created an add-in that adds IntelliSense in Blend. I have reused the code from Kaxaml and adapted it work within Blend. Take a look:
Download
You can download the add-in from here. What you need to do is:
- Extract the contents of installation archive in your Blend 2.5 installation folder (typically %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Expression\Blend 2.5 June 2008 Preview)
- Run Blend from the Blend.bat file that was extracted into Blend's installation folder. (The only way to run an add-in in Blend is to use a command line argument: -addin:path_to_the_addin - in our case -addin:Addins\Expression.Blend.IntelliSense.dll. You can also create a shortcut to Blend and pass this argument.)
Limitations
There are some limitation of the current implementation:
- You should have Blend 2.5 June Preview (Version 2.1.1535) - available for free download here. The addin did not run on Expression Blend 2.0.
- No support for custom namespace types and custom attached properties.
- Currently the Silverlight support is not accurate, because it is using the WPF XML schema for IntelliSense information.