I've got a project that contains usercontrols. For some reason, the design view for the window which uses the said controls has stopped functioning and insists on "Invalid Markup" - the error given is that some members of the usercontrols are not recognized or not accessible. The project however compiles and executes just fine. Loading it up in VS2010, the editor works fine, no errors whatsoever - the same even in Expression Blend.
So far I have tried the typical clean, rebuild, manually deleting stuff from obj, updating the .xaml and rebuilding, tried starting VS2012 with /resetuserdata and /resetsettings - the problem persists. I even rolled back to a much older revision of my project, back when the designer was working just fine, no dice - same error. I also tried launching VS2012 as a new windows user to avoid any stored appdata that might be lingering, again a no go.
Is there some other sort of cache or something that I could manually delete?
There's also an issue with the ShadowCache (used for rendering designer) getting out of sync with your XAML in VS2012. I just found this out, as I was having a horrible time with the following error with derived user controls:
The local property XXXX can only be applied to types that are derived from YYYYY.
The shadow cache is located in your user profile directory:
app data\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0\Designer\ShadowCache
You can delete everything in there and restart VS2012. After that, things worked much better (for at least a while!)
Delete everything in ShadowCache
C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0\Designer\ShadowCache\
Copy-pasteable paths
Just copy/paste one of these paths into Windows Explorer. %LOCALAPPDATA% is a Windows Environment Variable it will be replaced with the corresponding value when entered into Explorer (also works in Command Prompt)
VS2012
%LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0\Designer\ShadowCache\
VS2013
%LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\12.0\Designer\ShadowCache\
VS2015
%LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\14.0\Designer\ShadowCache\
ASP.NET
If you develop ASP.NET also delete
%LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\WebsiteCache
%LOCALAPPDATA%\Temp\VWDWebCache
I'm not sure this will fix all cases but this is what worked for me (all the time now).
I have VS2012, using the Blend designer in the IDE, building an x64 application, when I would define a new ICommand and add the Command attribute, I would get the designer isn't supported in x64 error (I forget the exact warning). If I switch to x86, I'd get invalid XAML markup errors complaining the the ICommand wasn't recognized or was not accessible, no matter how many times I rebuilt in x64. If I switch to x86, build, then switch back to x64, voila, not problems with the designer.
Now I recall similar issues with VS2008 and Blend version 3 and 4. From what I've read in other posts, using Any CPU might also resolve the issue.
May be you have added user controls which are not supported or you might have added some wrong parent-child relationship in your user controls . Try removing the suspected User Controls and rebuilding the project . It must fix the issue .
Cheers
You need to re:encode your xaml, open bugged files in ide -> save as -> save encoded (choose UTF8)
I've the same problem while using controls with a custom (no param) Constructor.
Check if the Custom/User Control constructor doesn't require any data that the WPF designer doesn't have. A quick wait to check that is surrounding the whole thing with a try catch, cleaning, rebuilding and then check to see if the problem is solver.
If it is not, try commenting everything except the default WPF Init cod, clean, rebuild and test it out.
In Visual Studio 2013 this is a workaround I using for my Windows Phone Project, http://danielhindrikes.se/visual-studio/workaround-for-invalid-markup-problems-when-developing-for-windows-phone/. I guess it is the same designer that is used when you writing XAML for WPF.
Have tried to delete Shadow Cache but itjust work first time I start Visual Studio, above workaround is the only thing that helped me.
A little late, but something else to consider: If your no-parameter constructor is doing some other work, like getting data that doesn't exist because you are in the designer, add this at the start of your constructor:
if (DesignerProperties.GetIsInDesignMode(new System.Windows.DependencyObject())) return;
// Do work.
This is necessary because the designer does execute your no-parameter constructor which may fail in design mode an give you the invalid markup.
And, regardless of what others are saying, this is not a VS or WPF XAML Parser bug. I ran into this issue today using VS 2015, .Net 4.5.2.
I just had the same problem (program compiling and running fine, XAML designer reporting invalid markup), the issue was that I had accidentally changed the assembly name of one of the projects in my solution, I changed it back and my XAML designer sprang back to life, so check the Properties page of each project in your solution, and ensure the Assembly Name is as you expect it to be.
I think there is no problem in your project, but it is problem in VS 2012. Try to install the latest update for VS 2012 (Update 2) and also check this answer.
Regards,
I have the same Problem with VS 2015 and 2017 but only if I compile for x64 only.
Here it helps if I change compile target (Project properties - Build, its called Plattformziel in german) temporarily to x86, compile to project and switch back to x64.
Maybe this is a "solution" for anybody else.
I'm working on an existing WinForms application and I am having some weird issues with Infragistics controls in a WinForms app.
When I open a form or usercontrol in the project that has Infragistics controls on it, it looks like
this http://sdrv.ms/S7gvmS
I cannot access any of the controls in the design surface. Clicking does nothing. And, all of the controls appear in the lower area.
So I created a new test solution and dropped some Infragisstics controls on and got this http://sdrv.ms/SRdo2y
Anyone know what's going on?
When I've run in to similar issues before it's tended to be a license or version problem, the Infragistics libraries contain code stopping them working at design-time if a valid license isn't installed. To resolve this, I'd first recommend deleting all of the *.licx files in your solution. These can be easily corrupted especially if you're using source control and should be regenerated correctly when you go in at design time. If that fails, then I'd try uninstalling and reinstalling Infragistics ensuring the version installed matches those of your projects' reference.
P.S. Realise this is far too late to help the original poster but hopefully will help people coming across similar issues in the future.
This happens when Visual Studio cannot find the Design assembly. The components refer to a designer and if Visual Studio cannot find the designer, it makes the assumption that the object is a component instead of a control and places it in the system tray.
Typically, this indicates that something when wrong with your installation of the components, so the usual solution is to re-install.
I'm a big fan of the rather obscure "Document Outline" window in VS 2008 (it's buried in the View -> Other Windows menu).
It's the only way I know to get a view of the containment heirarchy for a complicated WinForm that has a lot of nested controls.
Some months ago, this just stopped working for the most complicated form in my WinForms project. Now it just displays "There are no items to show for the selected document", no matter what I select in the designer.
No clue as to what broke it - the form contains a mix of common MS controls and some third party controls (mainly DevExpress). Several SplitContainers, but Document Outline originally had no problem with these.
Anybody else seen this, and any suggestions on how to fix it?
After some poking around, I solved the problem myself.
I just started deleting controls from the form, to see what would happen.
Turns out the 3rd party grid I'm using caused the problem - when I reconfigured it, the problem went away. (Looks like a bug in the control, which I've reported to the vendor).
Interesting...misbehaving controls can break the VS IDE, not just your apps.
I created some design time data from my windows phone 7 application and when I look at designer in Visual Studio (Express), the design time data shows up perfectly fine. However when I try to load the same project in Expression blend 4 I get an error and the design time data doesn't show up.
The error that I get is very generic "Error found in 'my xaml class' " The exact line that it points to is:
<phone:PhoneApplicationPage
...
d:DataContext="{d:DesignData Source=../DesignData/VendorDetailViewDesignData.xaml}"
...
>
I really have no idea what the problem could be since this works fine with the visual studio designer. Do I have to do something different for expression blend?
To create the design time data I basically followed
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/mcsuksoldev/archive/2010/08/27/designdata-mvvm-support-in-blend-vs2010-and-wpf-silverlight.aspx
and took the default windows phone projects that have design time data in them as an example.
The xaml class is in a the folder rootFolder/View/ while the design time data files are in rootFolder/DesignData/
Any help is appreciated! Thanks!
Haji
Without more details it's quite hard to know what the issue might be.
A neat trick to use for these kind of issues, is that you can actually attach to the Blend process from the Visual Studio debugger. Go to Debug -> Attach to Process, find the Blend.exe process and attach to that, then try opening the view in Blend, this should allow you to debug what's going on.
For step by step instructions on this, have a look at: Debugging Design-Time Exceptions
Good luck!
I created a form in WPF and it looked great. When I opened it in Visual Studio 2010, it look alot different than what I created.
Any ideas why this would happen? Should I ignore how it shows up in VS? This makes me wonder if either is how the user will actually see it.
Any suggestions?
Thanks again!
Eroc
The Visual Studio view of your WPF form is the designer view. Designer views of WPF forms, or really any other design of a UI component, will often differ in dislpay vs. the actual running component. Some of these differences are intentional to make design easier and some are just limitations of not having the WPF element actually running in a program (lack of certain runtime data bindings for example).
I wouldn't worry about it unless it starts looking incorrect when running.