Hey all, figured I'd leave my first Impressions here in this thread, though if you'd prefer it as a new Thread just let me know!

I'll preface that this that I spent a short time with Noesis Studio today, mainly from encountering a lot of crashes. But, the editor and what it is aiming to deliver is very promising!

General UX/UI

• Resource Dictionaries - Cool that it gives a preview of some things (I see some color resources). Don’t see anything in the navigator though, so to add or edit have to edit the text file.
  • Its nice that there is a quick jump to text file button though!
  • Can we change what program it opens the file in? I personally prefer VS/Blend to VsCode so I’d like an option to change the default script editing tool.
• Return Scope - After navigating to creating a style, or editing a template etc. The return to Scope button was difficult to find. In Blend its located above the Hierarchy. That is still a preferred spot for me, compared to the bottom of the Design View. Would be fine to have it in both locations though.
• Right Click Add - I found myself often wanting to right-click, and be able to quickly add a Control from a list. Unity has this functionality for adding Child or Parent objects. Under Edit, it would be nice to have “Add Child” and “Add Parent”, then get a list of all available controls. Instead of having to always go up to the Panel above and drag into the Hiearchy. Id' expect Add Parent to also work like "Group Into" in Blend, so you could multi select.
  • Another potentially Useful right click option would be “Replace With”, which would give me a list of controls to replace the current object. Often when writing xaml I’ll change a Grid into a StackPanel, or DockPanel, whatever. I would want to be able to easily do that here.
• Bindings - I played with setting these in the demo scene just a bit, but overall seemed quite intuitive! I was able to change the Command on a Button all on my own through the UI.
  • The only thing is I feel I want a Set Binding button or something at the bottom of the Bindings UI dropdown. It feels a bit odd to select a desired Binding, and then have to click the tiny yellow collapse arrow to get rid of this GUI element and confirm my choice.(Mabe I missed something in this flow though)
• Design View - Dragging Elements in and out of StackPanels works well in some cases, but not so great in others. Also tends to add weird Margins to keep the original position… to be fair Blend also has this issue..

Crashes / Stability

• While editing a Button Template... Deleted the Border + ContentPresenter and Added a DockPanel, but this is where the Crashes began...
  • Added a ContentPresenter as Child to the DockPanel and it crashed.
  • Reopened and got it to Add the Content Presenter, but then tried changing the Dock Property and it Crashed again…
  • While working on the Button Template. I ran into a lot of Crashes when changing Properties in the Properties Panel.
• Tried starting a new project instead and creating my own button there. But still ran into crashes. Decided to stop there.

Hoping to spend more time in a future, more stable version. Cheers!

Thank you for taking the time to write this feedback! We really appreciate it. All your comments are being analyzed by our team. We just wanted to highlight a few things.

Can we change what program it opens the file in? I personally prefer VS/Blend to VsCode so I’d like an option to change the default script editing tool.

This is on purpose because we are using our VsCode extension to handle eveything with Noesis. We believe this is (will be) a much better experience than writing XAML by hand in Blend.

Another potentially Useful right click option would be “Replace With”, which would give me a list of controls to replace the current object. Often when writing xaml I’ll change a Grid into a StackPanel, or DockPanel, whatever. I would want to be able to easily do that here.

This is now possible with Format => Change Layout Type => ...

Crashes / Stability

• While editing a Button Template... Deleted the Border + ContentPresenter and Added a DockPanel, but this is where the Crashes began...
  • Added a ContentPresenter as Child to the DockPanel and it crashed.
  • Reopened and got it to Add the Content Presenter, but then tried changing the Dock Property and it Crashed again…
  • While working on the Button Template. I ran into a lot of Crashes when changing Properties in the Properties Panel.
• Tried starting a new project instead and creating my own button there. But still ran into crashes. Decided to stop there.

Our team was able to reproduce the issue, which appears to be related to a common cause. This will be fixed in the next version. I will create a ticket for this as soon as possible.

Crashes / Stability

• While editing a Button Template... Deleted the Border + ContentPresenter and Added a DockPanel, but this is where the Crashes began...
  • Added a ContentPresenter as Child to the DockPanel and it crashed.
  • Reopened and got it to Add the Content Presenter, but then tried changing the Dock Property and it Crashed again…
  • While working on the Button Template. I ran into a lot of Crashes when changing Properties in the Properties Panel.
• Tried starting a new project instead and creating my own button there. But still ran into crashes. Decided to stop there.

This has been already fixed. Thanks for the feedback!

Ah great to hear on the fix, and thanks for the response! I'll try out the "Format-->Change Layout Type" on my next test of the Alpha.