Kaxaml 0.2 (Alpha) Now Available (UPDATED)
UPDATE: This is version of Kaxaml is no longer current. Get the latest at www.kaxaml.com.
Not sure how you’re Thanksgiving was, but mine was great. I had some extra hours to finally finish up Kaxaml 0.2. 
This is a pretty big update for a “dot” release which, in addition to a handful bug fixes, includes some sweet new features. You can download an MSI here. Here’s a rundown of the changes:
- Auto tag completion
This might be the next best thing after intellisense (which Kaxaml is still sadly lacking). It really does mean some serious typing savings. - Insert spaces instead of tab
No more crazy tabs in your XAML. Plus, along with this comes my best attempt to put the cursor in the right place when you hit enter. You can also indent (or unindent) multiple lines. - Less crashing
I’m trying to be a little smarter with unhandled exceptions now. I used to catch parse errors, but not runtime errors. Now, if you’re XAML throws at runtime I’ll try to kill the prased XAML object before it kills Kaxaml. - Other bug fixes and minor features
I’ve also fixed a bunch of little things that crop up during my day-to-day use, including some issues with “Save As…,” and Replace now works with empty strings, some refactoring, etc.
A lot of people have asked about intellisense and syntax coloring. Inteillisense could happen someday. I’m not saying it will, just that it’s not beyond my aspirations or technical abilities. Syntax coloring, on the other hand, is much harder. Kaxaml uses a regular old <TextBox /> for the text editor and it simply doesn’t support more than one color. My options would be to either use a <RichTextBox /> or create my own. RichTextBox is really slow. Seriously, you don’t want it in Kaxaml. Don’t get me wrong, it has its place, but Kaxaml is not one of them. Writing my own TextBox is beyond my aspirations.
In the meantime, I hope you enjoy Kaxaml and get a lot of use out of it. If you find bugs (and know it really is a bug), please let tell me about it. I know there are more than I’ve heard about. Also, the nuances of the editor behaviors I added still need some tweaking and I know it.
Also, if you want to start writing a plugin, ping me and I can get you started. If you’re plugin rocks, I’m happy to host it on my side or link to you. Plugins are super easy to write. I know I owe you some more documentation about that. It’s about halfway done and even has screenshots.
Oh, and this version was compiled for .NET 3.0 RTM. Woohoo!
November 29th, 2006 at 10:05 pm
Nice release!
You might consider using a SyntaxEditor from Actipro:
http://www.actiprosoftware.com/Products/DotNet/SyntaxEditor/Default.aspx
It will help you with both the intellisense and syntax highlighting, just by using the xaml schema.
November 30th, 2006 at 1:21 am
Hot! Well done, my friend.
November 30th, 2006 at 5:26 am
Sweetly awesome. The tag auto complete is an awesome new feature. Looking forward to using this and the final version (maybe even start writing some plugins later on).
Keep Up the Good Work
December 2nd, 2006 at 2:34 am
You could also use the TextEditor control from SharpDevelop project. It has SyntaxColoring and with a little code you could also get the AutoCompletion to work. I have tried it with my XamlXporter tool and it works great: http://pavanpodila.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!9C9E888164859398!172.entry
January 3rd, 2007 at 3:55 am
[…] Building a Perfect WPF Developer Workstation OK, so you’ve just decided that WPF is the strategic technology of choice for your next-generation application, and you’ve taken the opportunity to flatten and reinstall your developer workstation. What should you put on it to create the perfect WPF development environment? There are so many good tools, utilities and samples out there, that I thought I’d put together a little checklist that will hopefully help folk out. I’d love to hear your suggestions for anything that I’ve missed: I’ll try to keep this updated over time. Base Environment Windows Vista, of course! (although I’ll concede that Windows XP Service Pack 2 will work too…) Visual Studio 2005 with Service Pack 1 and Windows Vista Support Files Visual Studio 2005 Extensions for .NET Framework 3.0 Windows SDK Expression Blend and Expression Design Tools and Utilities XamlPadX, Kaxaml and XamlCruncher: three enhanced alternatives to the XamlPad tool that ships in the SDK. Each have their strengths: XamlPadX has some nice add-ons and is based on the XamlPad codebase, Kaxaml is great for demos and has good tab / indent support and XamlCruncher has high-quality source code available. Lutz Roeder’s .NET Reflector: handy for browsing through class hierarchies; Snoop: Peter Blois’ tool for visually debugging WPF applications; WPF Performance Tools: buried in the SDK but an essential part of the toolset for an application in the stabilization stages. Youll find it as %SdkTools%WpfPerf.exe (make sure you run it as an administrator if you’re using Windows Vista); Flexible Application Template: this replacement project template from one of the app services PMs allows you to create a single application project that can flip between an XBAP (web browser project) or rich client application just with an adjustment to the project type; ZAM 3D: Electric Rain’s utility for quickly creating and animating 3D meshes. XAML Converters: Utilities for converting 3DS, DXF, Blender, Fireworks, Lightwave, SWF, Maya and Illustrator files to XAML format. Building a Code Toolbox 3D Tools for WPF: interactive 2D on 3D surfaces, wireframe lines, 3D mouse navigation; Kevin’s Bag-o-Tricks: a collection of controls that extend and enhance the intrinsic types ColorPicker, FolderPicker, NumericUpDown, RadioButtonList, date controls, animating tile panel and graph controls; UI Automation Stress: stress testing for your application environment. (Add this code into a debug menu to make sure that you can’t crash your application with spurious input.) Sample Applications I’m the kind of developer who likes lots of sample code available to me for copying concepts, ideas and techniques. Copy these to a samples directory for quick access: Patient Monitoring Sample Woodgrove Finance Sample Thailand Sample Also unpack %SdkTools%..SamplesWPFSamples.zip to a samplessdk directory so you can easily browse through all the samples without needing to go through the SDK documentation interface. Now enable Windows Desktop Search (install WDS 3.0 here if you’re running Windows XP) and configure it to index file contents of .xaml, .cs, .vb files as a bare minimum. Make sure it’s set to index the entire samples directory that you put the above samples into. Now you can quickly pull up every sample that shows the usage of (say) BitmapSource and ColorConvertedBitmap just by hitting Win+F and searching for those keywords. Support The WPF MSDN Forum is frequented by both the product team and many other knowledgeable community members, and contains a great archive of questions previously asked (and answered); The WPF MSDN Newsgroup provides a very similar service to the web forum but in the form of a USENET newsgroup. At the time of writing, the forum seems to have significantly more traffic, however. Tips and Tricks Make sure that you integrate the Windows SDK documentation with the rest of the MSDN documentation on your system: run Start -> Windows SDK -> Visual Studio Registration -> Integrate Windows SDK with Visual Studio 2005 as an administrator for easy F1 integration from the code view. I make liberal use of pinned shortcuts on my Start menu to make it easier to access some of these tools, particularly XamlPad, WpfPerf and other tools that are really hidden by default. If you’re running Windows Vista, this tip will give you a quick shortcut to each of these items also. Set the Windows Presentation Foundation Font Cache system service to Automatic (Delayed Start) if you are running Windows Vista, to reduce initial start-up time for WPF applications. In Visual Studio, set the default font to Consolas - it’s easier on the eyes than Courier New and was designed with code development in mind. Consolas is included with Windows Vista or Office 2007, or you can download it here. From the Windows SDK documentation, the “New in Windows Vista” index filter is a great way to ensure that you don’t get the WPF and Windows Forms APIs accidentally mixed up: I’ve come across a few developers who had accidentally started using types from both libraries together simply because they hadn’t spotted the very subtle clues in the documentation that differentiate them. Filed under: wpf, workstation, setup, tools, tips […]
January 25th, 2007 at 1:44 pm
[…] WPF: Una instalación perfecta para trabajar con WPF Para empezar a trabajar con .NET 3.0 y con Windows Presentation Foundation hay que tener una buena máquina de base, y no me refiero a solamente a la configuración hardware del sistema, si no a un conjunto de aplicaciones que ayuden a que nuestro trabajo diario sea más productivo y fácil de llevar a cabo. Para ello voy a publicar una pequeña guÃa de software que os ayudará a hacer esto posible: Base del sistema: Windows Vista, a ser posible con la edición Bussiness o Ultimate para disfrutar de una mejor experiencia en el desarrollo de interfaces con WPF. Visual Studio 2005 con el Service Pack 1 y el parche Windows Vista Support Files Además de las Visual Studio 2005 Extensions for .NET Framework 3.0 Windows Vista SDK para tener siempre a mano un buen lugar de consulta. Además de Expression Blend Beta 1 y Expression Design December CTP para el desarrollo de interfaces. Añadidos a Visual Studio: Flexible Application Template: Esta plantilla nos proporciona un tipo de proyecto que nos permitirá cambiar el despliegue desde Visual Studio y cambiar entre aplicación de escritorio y aplicación XBAP para navegadores. Empty Project Template es una plantilla de proyecto para VS2005 que nos permite crear proyectos vacÃos creado por Charles Petzold. Editores de XAML: XamlPadX: Extensión del XamlPad que acompaña al SDK. Kaxaml: Editor que acepta code snnipets y con una interfaz simple y agradable. XamlCruncher: Editor de Charles Petzold que acompaña a su libro con el código fuente. Herramientas de depuración y rendimiento: Snoop: Herramienta de Peter Blois’ para depurar de forma visual aplicaciones WPF. Lutz Roeder’s .NET Reflector: Navegar entre el arbol de clases de un ensamblado. WPF Performance Tools: Herramientas de rendimiento integradas como parte del SDK. UI Automation Stress: pruebas de estrés para el entorno de nuestra aplicación WPF. Herramientas para Interfaces en 3D: ZAM 3D: Utilidad para crear y animar objetos en 3D y exportarlos a XAML para usarlos en nuestras aplicaciones. 3D Tools for WPF: librerÃa que nos permite interactuar con elementos 2D en objetos 3D. Colección de controles para WPF: Kevin’s Bag-o-Tricks: Una colección de controles que extienden y mejoran los disponibles en WPF. Y con esto ya tenemos a nuestra disposición una máquina preparada para comenzar a trabajar con Windows Presentation Foundation e indagar en todas las posibilidades que nos ofrece el nuevo subsistema gráfico de Windows. Posted: jueves, 25 de enero de 2007 9:00 por CODE FACTORY - Proof of Concept Archivado en: WPF,.NET 3.0 […]
June 25th, 2007 at 6:26 am
Robby, very very cool app. I am just starting on WPF, and I was able to follow your Total Training lesson, where you use XAMLPad, entirely in Kaxaml, no problems at all. By the way, nice work at Total Training!
July 11th, 2007 at 1:22 am
Simply put… Way better than XamlPad!!!
July 19th, 2007 at 3:54 am
[…] Kaxaml: Editor que acepta code snnipets y con una interfaz simple y agradable. […]
October 5th, 2007 at 5:57 pm
[…] Kaxaml: Editor que acepta code snnipets y con una interfaz simple y agradable. […]
October 28th, 2007 at 3:35 am
[…] Para descargar visite http://www.notstatic.com […]
December 8th, 2007 at 8:18 pm
Nice tool! I could not find Xamlpad (running .NET Framework 3.5 in Vista, only installed C#.NET 2008 Express), so this tool was definately a relief to find!