XAML Spy Useful tool for XAML developers

Released in June 2012, XAML Spy, Silverlight spy successor, is a tool to facilitate XAML developers life (Silverlight, Windows Phone and WinRT).

If you’re used to develop with HTML/CSS, you may know “developers tools” from Internet Explorer 9 or Chrome, which allow you to select elements in the web pages, find associated CSS properties and edit them on the fly in order to view the result in the browser.

Developer tools IE

In XAML application, any changes require rebuild in order to display new result. If the process is fast in little projects, it becomes painful in bigger projects.

XAMP Spy resolves this problem by offering similar tools as Internet Explorer 9 :

XAMLSpy elements

XAML tab offers a real time view of XAML. If this one is not directly editable, it’s updated when editing properties in Properties tab (see above).

XAMLSpy Explore

Statistics tab offers the number of created controls in visual tree located in the left part.

XAMLSpy Statistics To finish, Events tab displays events raised by the application in real time. Highlighted in green events match those raised by the selected control (dashed red).

XAMLSpy Events

Sample : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4VSe2bPioY

Note : Thank you to Koen Zwikstra for the license.


See also