newbie problems need context

Question

It appears I am doing something wrong, but not sure what.  I have a few years of Silverlight C# background so I thought I would be able to get going fairly quickly. 

But I am finding that simple things are not so easy.  For example, here are some of the problems I ran into.

1.  I create a folder called view, and then created a new ItemsPage and added it to this folder and it created so many broken references to common I had to delete it.

2.  After re-creating it at the top level I added a Textbox and it locked up the machine for about ten minutes.  After it finally unlocked, I dont think it actually added a label, or at least I cant find it.

3.  I tried binding the View to a ViewModel and it crashed the designer preview.

4.  So, I deleted this page, and added a simpler "basicPage".  Just adding this page caused the designer to crash again.  Building it once didnt help, building it twice didnt help, but the third time, the designer was no longer crashed.

5.  whenever I try to add a control to a page by either double clicking or dropping from the toolbox I get a message saying a reference has been added, no matter how many times I add the same control.  It is not adding adding a reference and it is not inserting a control.

6.  When I opened Expression Blend, and created a new project, there was no new project, and most of the menu bars were white text on white background, until I moused over them.  It was virtually impossible to do anything in EB because a project could not be createdk though it claimed it was creating a project.  And there were no files.

Is this going to be typical of what I am going to experience if I continue to attempt to develop in Metro C#?

Thanks,

Answer 1

There are some known issues with the Xaml designer in the Visual Studio 11 beta. You don't give enough information about your environment or errors to know which specific ones you are running into, but take a look at the threads (and sticky posts) discussing these in the Tools forum.

I'll move your post over there. Please update it with more details about the specific errors you are getting if you can't find solutions in the existing discussions.

--Rob

Answer 2

Rob,

The question wasnt so much about the specific errors, as in reality, virtually everything I am doing, even as simple as just adding a control is creating an error.

I am trying to decide if I want to abandon Metro until the tools are better, I am not trying to solve these particular problems, as if I run into a problem on almost everything i do, it seems to give some indication about things I have not yet tried either..

Since my question was not about tools, I can add to the difficulties that when I tried to find out what others are running into it, and how long they have to hang in there before they learn the work arounds, someone moves my post to an obscure forum without even understanding what I was asking. 

Thanks,

Daniel