Suggested Actions

• Jul 22, 2021
• 2 minutes to read

The new WPF XAML Designer includes a Suggested Actions menu that is similar to Smart Tags.

Suggested Actions give you access to common properties of a control selected within the new WPF XAML Designer.

Note

Suggested Action extensions were available in Visual Studio v16.8 Preview 4 and earlier. Unfortunately, these extensions were removed in Visual Studio v16.9 Preview 1 because of changes introduced to the Visual Studio Designer by Microsoft. We are working with Microsoft on extensibility for Suggested Actions and will make this capability available once Microsoft updates Visual Studio.

Requirements

To use Suggested Actions, install Visual Studio 2019.

.NET Core applications use the new WPF XAML Designer by default. For .NET Framework apps, enable the following option in Visual Studio:

Tools > Options > Preview Features > New WPF XAML Designer for .NET Framework (requires restart)

Use Suggested Actions

Select a control and click the “light bulb” to expand the Suggested Actions menu.

The Suggested Actions menu’s title displays the selected control’s class name. You can click this name to open a documentation article that describes the control.

The Suggested Actions menu includes three tabs:

• General - contains the most important properties of the selected control.
• Appearance - contains properties that allow you to change the selected control’s appearance (for example, Background and Alignment).
• Behaviors - allows you to add Behaviors and Services to the selected control.

The Suggested Actions menu for the Window elements allows you to convert the Window to ThemedWindow.

Limitations

• Suggested Actions are not supported for non-visual elements (for example, BarItem, GridColumn, RibbonPage / RibbonPageGroup / RibbonPageCategory).

• Suggested Actions do not allow you to invoke the following wizards:

  • Items Source Wizard
  • Scaffolding Wizard
  • Configuration Wizards (for example, Chart Designer, Feature Browser for the Data Grid). Wizards for the Diagram Designer and Item Template Designer are supported.