When will the XamDockManager and pane controls be fully supported in Blend?
My graphics designer is very unahppy about the lack of design time support in Blend - specifically that whole content panes do not show up in the "Objects and Timeline" in the left.
I understand the frustration. This is a limitation of the current version of Blend (2.x) and isn't something we can get around. Essentially they have hard coded checks for what is included in the object tree - e.g. Content from ContentControl, Header & Content from HeaderedContentControl, the "ContentProperty" for a control, etc. Blend 3 is supposed to include extensibility in this area to allow controls to indicate that other objects should be displayed there as well. When that is released we will be sure to take advantage of the new metadata to ensure that the Panes are exposed from there as well.