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Expression Blend is blocked / locked / malfunctioning?


I am experiencing some very strange behavior with Blend:

Since weeks i am working an a project where I use Blend 4 and Visual Studio 2010 simultaneously. I've never experienced problems with one of these programs or with their co-existence. Work proceeds fine.

But a few minutes ago - from one boot of the computer to the next - Blend seems to have a serious problem:

From now on I am not able alter any value anywhere in my project. I can't create new Controls on a plain surface as well delete existing ones. If i try to alter some attribute of some existing control, the width of an existing button for example nothing happens:

Drag and Drop with the mouse results in nothing more than a slight flickering of the control which looks like if it is fighting against my modification to retain its current value. Regardless what manipulation I apply with the mouse the control stays untouched neither does any value in the properties-panel of Blend change.

It feels as if my project is in read-only mode or locked somehow.

But now comes the frustrating fact: When I apply the modifications described above nothing changes BUT the corresponding XAML code does! Enlarging the width of a button with the mouse doesn't show any effect at the control itself or in the properties pane but the XAML attribute width is changing as I move the mouse ?!

Did anybody also experience this behavior before ? Does anyone has some suggestions ? Maybe the solution is very obvious and just made a fool of myself but I got really stuck with that problem - so any help or suggestions are very much appreciated ... Thanks in advance !

EDIT: It really seems to be a Blend problem because when I open the project in Visual Studio everything is working as it should ...


Solution

  • Are you certain that there is not a control sitting on top of the others?

    Alternatively, are your other controls in a panel (perhaps a grid) that has it's visibility set in a trigger? If so, Visual Studio displays controls visibility a little differently than Blend does. Blend attempts to get the property to which you bound your visibility during design time, whereas Visual Studio seems to display the item so long as you have visibility initially set to visible.

    Can we see some code to make sure?