XAML Spy May 2014 Update

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Announcing the May 2014 Update of XAML Spy. This update adds support for the much needed property filtering in Visual Studio and includes a variety of fixes and improvements. For a detailed list of all changes see the release notes.

Property filtering in Visual Studio

The ability to filter the massive set of properties in the XAML Spy property grid is key to quickly identify and locate properties. Property filtering has been available in the standalone XAML Spy app for a while, and is now available in Visual Studio as well. For this purpose XAML Spy introduces a new tool window in Visual Studio; XAML Spy Properties. The default Visual Studio Properties tool window does not support property filtering and cannot be extended. Therefore it was deemed necessary to create this new tool window. On top of that having a custom property grid tool window enables a number of new scenarios which will be revealed in future XAML Spy updates.

Additionally the new tool window comes with attached property filtering and supports property value actions such as clear local value and reset to default. The following animation demonstrates some of its new features.

The XAML Spy Properties tool window can be activated by selecting the Properties button in the XAML Spy Explorer toolbar or by selecting View > Other Windows > XAML Spy Properties in the Visual Studio main menu.

The default Visual Studio Properties tool window is still available for XAML Spy property inspection, but does not include the new features.