Designer ASP.NET MVC Razor

Question

I am introducing ASP.NET MVC for a new team, and one of the questions that often arises is "Is there a designer's view"

Even if it's not for layout, there is a visual studio visualization type IN for ASP.NET MVC3 using a razor view mechanism.

Answer 1

No, there is no designer. The designer will probably find it difficult to understand what Razor means in many cases.

It's actually not that difficult to just use your web browser as a viewer. You can make changes to HTML without having to recompile, just make changes, save and update your browser.

EDIT (8/2/2013)

Since this answer was originally written, Microsoft released Visual Studio 2012, which includes the Page Inspector function, which, although it is not a true “designer” in the form in which this question was written, gives a much more pleasant half-live view mode. This has been improved in Visual Studio 2013 (which was RTM'd today, 10/17/13).

Answer 2

I use a web browser window and set the URL of my local host instead of the designer. view> "other windows"> "web browser". Then I split the windows vertically or horizontally.

Answer 3

I was able to work using the following trick:

• change the razor file extension to .html
• Open document
• when opening the document, change the file extension to .cshtml

Congratulations, you now have a designer look for your razor file. If you need an intellisense razor, close it and open it.

Answer 4

No, in general, you should try to avoid visual designers. The combination of HTML / CSS / Javascript is something that simply cannot be done well with visual designers, and the short-term pain of learning these manually will be worth it. Once you know this well, you will code in a cleaner and faster way. I often use Expression Web to perform initial layouts before copying in Visual Studio.

Answer 5

I think they are working on this as a feature for Expression Blend 5 Developer Preview .

They are clearly aware of the JS design problem in the designer, so I suspect they understand that the same applies to some designers working on MVC applications.

Someone from Microsoft told me: "I think that in Blend for HTML, using interactive mode, you'll probably be fine with designing MVC or MVVM templates."

Also check out Visual Studio Page Inspector , it looks like it will do what it needs

In Visual Studio 2013, a browser link has been added, which allows two-way communication between the browser and Visual Studio. This means that you can update the browser when the code changes and instantly see how it looks. You can also change Css in the browser and save it in Visual Studio

Answer 6

I know I'm late for the party, but ..

You can trick the IDE as described above, but if you are building applications in MVC, you should be comfortable viewing the code. It is more productive, and most of the flexible design and implementation of css can give you false results in design representation. The designer is useful in WebForms. But with the Browser Link feature in Visual Studio 2013 there is no more reason to spoof your IDE, you can open the one-to-many browser and receive live updates back and forth from the browser to the visual studio. I can not win! The browser is where it is!

Link to the browser!

Set the following and you will be golden!

Microsoft Visual Studio 2013 Update 3
Web Essentials (Depends on VS 3 Update)

Answer 7

There is a workaround mentioned here http://www.codeproject.com/KB/aspnet/EnablingDesignerSupport.aspx