I just found out that the blend in visual studio for windows 8 can only do windows 8 store things and no WPF. So how the hell does one get a proper editor for this? You can’t tell me that you’re typing all that by hand…

I do type all my xaml by hand personally (in visual studio) however the blend i have ( part of vs 2013 beta) does support wpf

Hi sfernandez,

I have take a look at the videos and it is impressive, congratulations !

I have some stupid questions:

How are build/designed interfaces ? I mean, is there a specific editor ?
How do you declare an visual element as a specific entity in order to be able to retrieve it the code ?

Thank you

I have Visual Studio 2012 Professional, and the bundled version of Blend does indeed support WPF and even Silverlight apps, at least I think it began to support those as of Visual Studio 2012 Update 1 or 2 if I’m not mistaken. A Visual Studio Professional subscription will sit you back USD799/year. You can also get Visual Studio without subscription, which I think is about USD499. So it isn’t that bad

I just found out that the blend in visual studio for windows 8 can only do windows 8 store things and no WPF. So how the hell does one get a proper editor for this? You can’t tell me that you’re typing all that by hand…

Microsoft seems to be reorganizing its XAML related products and the transition is being a bit chaotic (at least for me).

As Ronan pointed, the Visual Studio 2013 product line will have support for designing WPF applications (Blend style).
I will stick to Visual Studio Express 2013 for Windows Desktop because it works in Windows 7 and Windows 8, and has support for WPF applications, and for free. You can download the Preview from here .

Hi sfernandez,

I have take a look at the videos and it is impressive, congratulations !

I have some stupid questions:

How are build/designed interfaces ? I mean, is there a specific editor ?
How do you declare an visual element as a specific entity in order to be able to retrieve it the code ?

Thank you

We used Microsoft Expression Blend because it was a great tool for designing XAML based applications, but Microsoft is abandoning the Expression product line towards the new Visual Studio versions. As I recently commented, the best option seems to be Visual Studio Express 2013 for Windows Desktop. And if you feel comfortable with a text based editor, I suggest Kaxaml .

There are different ways of connecting visual elements with the application logic. The simpler will be by giving a name to the element you want to modify:

xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"> <TextBlock x:Name="text" Text="Hello!"/> </Grid>

using UnityEngine;
using Noesis;
public class CodeBehind: MonoBehaviour
    // Use this for initialization
    void Start()
        NoesisGUIPanel gui = GetComponent<NoesisGUIPanel>();
        FrameworkElement root = gui.GetRoot<FrameworkElement>();
        TextBlock text = root.FindName<TextBlock>("text");
        text.SetText("Bye bye");
Is it possible to populate gui by script? For example downloading and displaying a level list with preview thumbnails
Of course, anything that can be expressed in XAML can be done with code. You can get the ItemCollection associated to any ItemsControl element and add items dynamically to it.
NoesisGUIPanel gui = GetComponent<NoesisGUIPanel>();
FrameworkElement root = gui.GetRoot<FrameworkElement>();
ListBox listbox = root.FindName<ListBox>("MyList");
ItemCollection items = listbox.GetItems();
items.Add(new TextBlock("Item 1");
items.Add(new TextBlock("Item 2");
I will try to explain this topic because it is a mess even for us.
For text editing of XAML, I highly recommend Kaxaml.
All Visual Studio versions (Express included) come with a basic XAML Designer. It is a visual editor that could be a valid tool for many people that wants to work with XAML.
But Blend is a more advanced and powerful tool to edit XAML interfaces.
Blend for WPF/SL (the one we support now) is currently available in Professional/Ultimate versions of Visual Studio (since VS 2012).

Anyone can try it downloading the 2013 preview here.
Expression Blend 4 (which supports WPF/SL) is still available for Microsoft Bizspark subscriptors as part of the Expression Studio 4 pack.
There is another version of Blend that generates XAML for Windows Store and Windows Phone 8 applications, and is available for free in Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows 8 here. There aren’t many differences between the generated XAML for WinRT and for WPF, so we will adapt our parser to support it very soon.
We will add all this information to the first post of this thread to be available for everyone 
Finally got blend for WPF from the vs 2013 beta thing, now I can start toying around with this and look how it works
Unlike many other people in this community I don’t have hundreds of dollars to throw at random assets before knowing that they are exactly what I need :v
As sergio said, things seem to be more or less the same:
Blend continues to be a commercial product (now integrated in the professional versions of Visual Studio).
There are new versions of XAML (Windows8 and Windows Phone) and a new version of Blend for that versions that is free and included in the Express version of Visual Studio.
This new version of XAML is almost compatible with NoesisGUI. I think that with minor changes on our side there will be a free high quality XAML editor for NoesisGUI.
              
Hi sfernandez,
Congratulations on your package.

Nice to see another credible UI contender to NGUI.
Your price of $150 is stunning.
Hi sfernandez,
Congratulations on your package.

Nice to see another credible UI contender to NGUI.
Your price of $150 is stunning.
Thanks, we try to do our best 
The price is very adjusted because we know that is hard to trust a new company creating a whole new product. We preferred to set a lower price in order to catch the attention of more people, so that will help us mature, polish and build a better product.
Hi sfernandez,
Congratulations on your package.

Nice to see another credible UI contender to NGUI.
Your price of $150 is stunning.
Have to agree this solution is very powerful, its easily the most flexible I have used.

However NGUI is not a patch on Noesis GUI.
Once you get the tools in place (Blend 4/Visual 2013) the workflow is brilliant.

The Devs should not waste their time on an integrated editor I was able to get excellent scalable GUI’s on various Android devices just by dropping the xaml files from blend into Unity folders. 
The Unity people should have a word with the Noesis Devs and make them offer they can’t refuse. 
 Techdread:
Have to agree this solution is very powerful, its easily the most flexible I have used.

However NGUI is not a patch on Noesis GUI.
Once you get the tools in place (Blend 4/Visual 2013) the workflow is brilliant.

The Devs should not waste their time on an integrated editor I was able to get excellent scalable GUI’s on various Android devices just by dropping the xaml files from blend into Unity folders. 
The Unity people should have a word with the Noesis Devs and make them offer they can’t refuse. 
I don’t know if that would be a good thing, seeing how unity can’t (not mocking them there, understandable) get a lot of the side projects going, it’s probably better if they focus on the core let the asset store do it’s job, it’s been working very well that way so far i think we’ll see more innovation on this vs if unity took it over and made it a mini project inside unity.
I don’t know if that would be a good thing, seeing how unity can’t (not mocking them there, understandable) get a lot of the side projects going, it’s probably better if they focus on the core let the asset store do it’s job, it’s been working very well that way so far i think we’ll see more innovation on this vs if unity took it over and made it a mini project inside unity.
I think what frustrates me is, many assets on the store lose support (even through they remain on sale).

On the other hand…Unity features may actually be “worse” than some asset store features. I find it unlikely that they will -always- produce the most optimal system.
But, at least if it is built in…it WILL be supported…to the extent that Unity supports their systems. The asset store is sometimes a risk. I think it’s fair to say, people have spent a LOT of money on assets…that are no longer supported. Those turn into educational pieces of code :\
And don’t forget…Unity’s systems are closed. And the new ui coming? I don’t know how flexible it is, compared to Noesis. What if it’s not? We’ll find out…when it’s already pretty much decided what it will be.
Personally, I hope very much that Noesis flourishes for a long time.
I don’t know if that would be a good thing, seeing how unity can’t (not mocking them there, understandable) get a lot of the side projects going, it’s probably better if they focus on the core let the asset store do it’s job, it’s been working very well that way so far i think we’ll see more innovation on this vs if unity took it over and made it a mini project inside unity.
What Unity should at least do is allowing native plugins in all versions of Unity (not only pro). We don’t think this must be a pro feature. NoesisGUI contains critical parts that need to be very efficient. And this only pro behavior is limiting our penetration.