Visual Studio 2010 Designer
This is an old post and doesn't necessarily reflect my current thinking on a topic, and some links or images may not work. The text is preserved here for posterity.
I have been using Visual Studio 2010 since it RTW'd on a pretty sophisticated WPF application. Although I still hand-write 90% of my XAML, I have gotten used to the VS 2010 Cider designer view sitting above my XAML, and using the designer screen to preview my XAML and to quickly navigate to it.
What has really impressed me is how resilient and reliable the designer is - I have to actively go out of my way to break it, even in some pretty complicated places. I don't find much reason to use the toolbox, property window or data features, but the designer surface is proving very useful now that it works so reliably.
My thanks to the team for surprising me by how well the 2010 designer works.