Saving different views of your workspace (Windows Store apps)

After you have moved and resized your workspace panels, and crafted the perfect workspace for you to work optimally, you can save the workspace under a descriptive name and restore it later.

Workspace properties that are saved

Saved information includes the visibility of panels, the size and orientation of panels, the panels that are within panel groups, and whether a panel is floating or docked. For information about arranging workspace panels, see Making more room to work (Windows Store apps).

Saved information does not include the artboard settings, or the Workspace options that you can set when you click Options on the Tools menu.

Workspace presets

Blend for Visual Studio 2012 comes with the following two predefined workspace presets:

  • The Animation workspace preset makes animation tasks easier by moving the Objects and Timeline panel under the artboard so that you can stretch the timeline across the width of the Blend window. For more information, see Make more room for the animation timeline (Blend for Visual Studio).

    Important

    The Animation workspace is only available when you are working on XAML-based projects.

  • The Design workspace preset makes it easier to see all the objects in your object tree by moving the Objects and Timeline panel to the left side of the artboard.

Blend lets you save multiple workspaces that you have customized for different projects or different kinds of work. When you save a workspace layout, you create a new preset, just like the Design and Animation workspace presets.

For information about how to save workspaces and switch workspaces, see Save a workspace (Windows Store apps) and Select a workspace (Windows Store apps).

Modifying a workspace preset

To save you time, Blend automatically saves the changes that you make to your currently-selected workspace.

For example, if you save your current workspace under the name "Workspace1" and then move a panel, Blend saves the new position of the panel in Workspace1. You could close and reopen Blend, or switch to a different workspace and then switch back to Workspace1, and the panel will be displayed in the new position.

However, Blend does not change the original layout of the Workspace1 preset that you initially saved. You can always return to the original preset by resetting your workspace while in Workspace1. If you do this, the panel that you moved will return to the position it was in when you first saved Workspace1.

For information about how to reset a workspace, see Reset the current workspace (Windows Store apps).

To create a new workspace preset with the panel in the new position, move the panel and then save the workspace under a new name.

Managing the list of saved workspaces

You can use the workspace management window to delete and rename workspaces, and to see which workspace is currently selected. For more information, see Rename or delete a workspace (Windows Store apps) and Find out which workspace was loaded last (Windows Store apps).

See Also

Concepts

Blend workspace (Windows Store apps)

Making more room to work (Windows Store apps)