Design view provides a visual design surface for building your WPF controls and applications. It shows a rendered representation of the XAML currently in XAML view.

You can place controls on the design surface by dragging them from the Toolbox, and you can position controls by dragging. Several design aids help you place controls exactly where you want them. When you change controls on the design surface, XAML view updates to reflect your changes. For more information, see How To: Add Controls to a WPF Window and How to: Select and Move Elements on the Design Surface.

XAML view provides a complete editing experience for XAML documents, that includes IntelliSense, auto-formatting, syntax highlighting, and tag navigation. When you edit XAML, Design view updates to reflect your changes.

For more information, see Walkthrough: Editing XAML in the WPF Designer.

You use the Properties window to set property values on controls in Design view.

Access the Properties window by opening the View menu and selecting Properties Window, or by pressing CTRL+W, P or F4. You can also right-click a control in Design view, and select Properties on the shortcut menu. The Properties window displays a thumbnail preview of the currently selected control.

To search for a property, start typing the name of the property in the Search box at the top of the Properties window. The Properties window shows the properties that match your search as you type. Click Clear to remove the search and display all the selected object's properties.

Starting in Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1, you can sort properties alphabetically or by category. To sort properties alphabetically, click the Alphabetical button at the top of the Properties window. To sort properties by category, click the Categorized button at the top of the Properties window.

The Document Outline window provides a hierarchical view of a XAML document. You can use the Document Outline window to preview, select, or delete XAML elements. Access the Document Outline window by opening the View menu, pointing to Other Windows, and selecting Document Outline, or by pressing CTRL+ALT+T. For more information, see Navigating the Element Hierarchy of a WPF Document.

The Toolbox holds the controls which you can drag onto the design surface. Access the Toolbox window by opening the View menu and selecting Toolbox, or by pressing CTRL+ALT+X.

Use the Zoom control to control the size of the design surface. You can zoom from 10% to 20x.

Use the Fit in view button to size the design surface to the available screen in Design view. This is useful if you have zoomed very far in or out.

Use the grid rails to manage rows and columns in a Grid control. You can create and delete columns and rows, and you can adjust their relative widths and heights. For more information, see How to: Add Rows and Columns to a Grid.

Use gridlines to control the width and height of a Grid's columns and rows. You can add a new column or row by clicking in the rails above and to the left of the Grid. For more information, see How to: Add Rows and Columns to a Grid.

A gridline indicator appears as a triangle in the grid rail. When you drag a gridline indicator or the gridline itself, the widths or heights of adjacent columns or rows update as you move the mouse. For more information, see How to: Add Rows and Columns to a Grid.

A move handle appears in the upper-left of a selected panel control. Click the move handle and drag the control to the desired position on the design surface. For more information, see How to: Select and Move Elements on the Design Surface.

Resize handles appear on selected controls. Click and drag a resize handle to change the size of the selection. When you resize a control, width and height values typically appear to help exactly size the control.

Margins represent the amount of fixed space between the edge of a control and the edge of its container. Set the margins of a control by clicking its margin lines. For more information, see How to: Set Margins for a Control in the WPF Designer.

A margin stub appears on a selected control when its margin in set to 0. Click the margin stub to set a margin distance to the corresponding edge of the container. For more information, see How to: Set Margins for a Control in the WPF Designer.

Use snaplines to align controls relative to each other. If snaplines are enabled, when you drag a control relative to other controls, snaplines appear when edges and the text of some controls are aligned horizontally or vertically. For more information, see How to: Align to Both Text Baselines and Margins.

Use the split view bar to control the relative sizes of Design view and XAML view. You can control whether the split view is horizontal or vertical, and you can collapse either view. For more information, see Split View: Viewing the WPF Design Surface and XAML at the Same Time.

You can move to any parent tag of the currently selected tag in XAML view by using the tag navigator. When you hover over a tag in the tag navigator, a thumbnail preview is displayed for that element. Walkthrough: Editing XAML in the WPF Designer.

For step-by-step information about how to use these features, see the following Help topics.

For a full introduction to ClickOnce, see ClickOnce Deployment Overview. For step-by-step information about how to use these features, see the following Help topics,