KludgeHack

Snooping WPF applications

Snoop is a great utility to explore running WPF applications. It displays the visual tree as well as properties and events.

It can be used to map UI elements to the underlying project classes.

This application is very similar to the famous Spy++, but for WPF applications. You can inspect the insides of any WPF application, including Microsoft Expression Blend (also a WPF application).

“Using such tool can help you climb the steep WPF learning curve.” – Matt Griffith

Some of his main features are:

• Browse the visual tree of running WPF applications.
• Inspect properties of elements at runtime.
• Edit properties of elements at runtime.
• Inspect RoutedEvents that are occurring, including the elements that handle them.
• Magnify sections of the UI.
• Find and debug binding errors.

The only problem I see with this tool is that only works with Windows applications, not Browser-based.

You can download it here and find its official website with the entire documentation here.

There’s also a Matt Griffith screencast that shows the simple use of IronPython and Snoop to explore the Windows Presentation Foundation.

After some use of the tool, I think is very weird they didn’t added this to the coming Visual Studio “Orcas”. Just the same way a web developer can watch its page DOM state at runtime, WPF apps aren’t any different.