The Document Outline has been part of Visual Studio IDE for a some time. Web developers seem to be familiar with this window and use it frequently. I find that Winform developers are less likely know about it or use it. VS 2008 Document Outline has a few improvements over the VS 2005 version and in 2008 it works with the WPF designer too. To show the Document Outline window click the (View\OtherWindows\Document Outline) menu.
Features
You can work with the outline view whether viewing your WPF class in XAML view or Design view. For today’s examples I’ll be working with the XAML view. Once the outline window is open you can select an element in either the outline or your XAML doc. Visual Studio synchronizes the two views.
There is a nice preview function that shows a element and all it’s children. I find this much handier than the preview window built-in to the Property window.
Context menu
Right clicking a node in the outline view brings up a simple context menu with a few self explanatory items. There is also a context menu for selecting the text in the XAML view.
That’s about all there is for the Document Outline view.
