Upgrading to VS 2012

Question

My company currently devlops a desktop application (no web, no silverlight) using VS 2008, .NET Framework 3.5 and Blend 3. In a month or so we plan to upgrade our VS to 2012. Will I need to upgrade our Blend as well? Is Blend 4 enough?

Answer 1

Blend 4 supports up to WPF 4, VS 2010 supports up to WPF 4. VS2012 supports up to WPF 4.5. 

There is a preview release of Blend that supports WPF 4.5, see here (it also has a chart of what to use for each platform):

http://blendinsider.com/technical/announcing-blend-sketchflow-preview-for-visual-studio-2012-2012-08-15/

Answer 2

Why are there previews in the first place? The Silverlight 5 preview is about to have its first birthday....is there an official line on when these previews will end?

It was interesting that when Soma went on Reddit he skipped the question on blend by Cheetah Chrome (OmegaMan was taken):

"With VS2012 including the Blend design workspace for Xaml, what is the future of the Expression suite? Will there be any more covergence of tools between the Visual tools group and the Blend group specifically within Visual Studio?"

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William Wegerson (www.OmegaCoder.Com)

Answer 3

Previews are released to give a preview of upcoming functionality, as well as to get feedback from the community. It is similar to a beta in that way. We can't comment on possible future product releases here.

In VS 2012, the WPF/SL design surfaces are the same technology and based on the same code as Blend. 

Answer 4

I went and read your question on Reddit, realized I answered with something you already knew (about VS/Blend). Same thing applies though about not commenting on future product releases.

Answer 5

Thank you Chuck. :-)

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William Wegerson (www.OmegaCoder.Com)

Answer 6

Double check that you are opening it in the correct program, the Preview that supports 4.5 is a side by side install with Blend 4. Blend 4 is not modified by installing the preview, you have to open the new program to open WPF 4.5 projects.

Answer 7

As an aside this is the reverse (? unclear if it happens in Blend) of the issue I responded to on StackOverflow VS 2012 hangs on loading XAML designer.

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William Wegerson (www.OmegaCoder.Com)

Answer 8

I found the problem. The preview that download installs two programs called "Blend for Visual Studio". My assumption was that the one with "preview" in the title came first and was therefore an older version. The truth is that the one with "preview" is the later version and therefore works.