Hide WPF elements in Visual Studio designer

Question

I have a WPF form which basically looks like this:

  
    
      [content shown during normal operation]
             


        

Answer 1

Nice solution, I was having a similar problem and I agree that there are cases where it's needed. Here is a minor update that allows you to edit the value to turn IsHidden on and off while designing. I also applied a ScaleTransform instead of setting Width and Height to reduce screen artifacts a bit if control grips etc are displayed and to avoid conflicts if the control being hidden already has Width and Height properties set (assuming that the control doesn't already have a LayoutTransform set on it).

Public Class DesignModeTool

  Public Shared ReadOnly IsHiddenProperty As DependencyProperty = DependencyProperty.RegisterAttached( _
    "IsHidden", GetType(Boolean), GetType(DesignModeTool), _
    New FrameworkPropertyMetadata(False, New PropertyChangedCallback(AddressOf OnIsHiddenChanged)))

  Public Shared Sub SetIsHidden(ByVal element As FrameworkElement, ByVal value As Boolean)
    element.SetValue(IsHiddenProperty, value)
  End Sub

  Public Shared Function GetIsHidden(ByVal element As FrameworkElement) As Boolean
    Return DirectCast(element.GetValue(IsHiddenProperty), Boolean)
  End Function

  Private Shared Sub OnIsHiddenChanged(ByVal d As DependencyObject, ByVal e As DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs)
    If System.ComponentModel.DesignerProperties.GetIsInDesignMode(d) AndAlso True.Equals(e.NewValue) Then
      With DirectCast(d, FrameworkElement)
        .LayoutTransform = New ScaleTransform(0.001, 0.001)
      End With
    ElseIf System.ComponentModel.DesignerProperties.GetIsInDesignMode(d) AndAlso False.Equals(e.NewValue) Then
      With DirectCast(d, FrameworkElement)
        .LayoutTransform = Nothing
      End With
    End If
  End Sub
End Class