Install the Windows Embedded XAMLTools (Compact 2013)
10/26/2015
The Windows Embedded XAML Tools and application templates for Expression Blend are included in the Windows Embedded Compact 2013 installer. However, they are not installed if your computer does not have the following prerequisite software installed:
- **Microsoft Visual Studio 2015, Microsoft Visual Studio 2013 ** or **Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 **- required by Windows Embedded XAML Tools
- **Blend ** - required for the Expression Blend templates
To Install the Prerequisite Software
If you already installed Windows Embedded Compact 2013 without the prerequisites, run the Windows Embedded Compact 2013 installer again to uninstall both the Windows Embedded XAML Tools and Platform Builder.
Install Visual Studio. For the purposes of these instructions, we assume you will install Visual Studio 2015; however, Windows Embedded Compact 2013 also supports Visual Studio 2012 and Visual Studio 2013.
The Visual Studio installation now includes Expression Blend for Visual Studio.
To Install the Windows Embedded XAML Tools and Expression Blend Project Templates
Run the installer for Windows Embedded Compact 2013.
If this is the first time you have installed Windows Embedded Compact 2013, do one of the following:
- Choose Custom install (select options to install) in the Installation Options dialog box, and then select the following options in the Customize Installation dialog box:
- **Platform Builder **
- **Windows Embedded XAML Tools **
- Choose Full Install (installs all options available) in the Installation Options dialog box.
If you are updating your existing installation of Windows Embedded Compact 2013, select the following options in the Customize Installation dialog box.
- **Platform Builder **
- **Windows Embedded XAML Tools **
- Choose Custom install (select options to install) in the Installation Options dialog box, and then select the following options in the Customize Installation dialog box:
To Verify the Installtion
To verify that Windows Embedded XAML Tools was installed successfully, look for the **Windows Embedded XAML Tools ** option on the Tools menu in Visual Studio.
The Expression Blend templates are installed at %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\IDE\ProjectTemplates\CSharp\Silverlight\1033\WindowsEmbeddedCompact2013. If you plan to use a non-English version of Blend, you must manually copy the template files from %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\IDE\ProjectTemplates\CSharp\Silverlight\1033\WindowsEmbeddedCompact2013 to the following directory, which you must create in your local user directory: %Users%\<user-name>\Documents\Visual Studio 2015\Templates\ProjectTemplates. After you manually copy the files to the new directory path, Expression Blend can display the templates in its New Project dialog box.
Tip
You can install evaluation versions of the required software from Windows Embedded Downloads.
Next Steps
Convert an Expression Blend Project to a XAML for Windows Embedded Application Template