Quirks of Visual Studio's property pane with WPF

Working in the visual designer of a WinForm project, when one selects an element the properties pane lists all the properties for that element. Selecting a property in the properties pane then displays a description for that property (the value of the assigned DescriptionAttribute) in a property description box immediately below the list of properties. Even without the visual designer open, one can select another item (e.g. an entry in the solution explorer) to show its properties in the properties pane and the property description box is still active and visible.

When working in the visual design of a 开发者_运维问答WPF project, on the other hand, the property description box does not appear (true for both VS2008 and VS2010). Is there a way to expose it? Surely it must be available, or is this a defect?

The only page I could find in VS documentation is Quick Tour of the IDE that illustrates and describes each section of the visual designer -- except for the properties pane!

2010.02.11 Update

Since, according to Will Eddins answer, there is no way to do this (and the situation is unchanged with the just released VS2010 release candidate) I have filed a defect report against VS2010.

To show the properties pane, on the menu select View >> Properties Window. Alternatively, press F4.

Seems to me a bug too. I don't know if you got any answers from Microsoft Connect but I had a work-around which worked for me always.

First, open VS2008/2010 in waiting mode(meaning; if you have set a starting project, unset it). Go to the solution explorer panel. On the top left of the panel, you may see a box named "properties", click on it. You can alternatively press Alt+Enter.

http://i43.tinypic.com/52nxtv.png

Now, as you open the properties panel, you can see the description box down in the panel(if it is not hidden in your settings file). You may have to resize it.

Now load any project you want ;)