ASP.NET MVC Razor designer

No, there is no designer. It would likely be difficult for a designer to even know what is meant by Razor code in many cases.

It's really not so difficult to just use your web browser as a viewer. You can make changes to the HTML without having to recompile, just make the change, save, and refresh your browser.

EDIT (8/2/2013)

Since this answer was originally written, Microsoft has released Visual Studio 2012 which includes a feature called Page Inspector, which while not a true "designer" in the way that the question was written, it does give a much nicer semi-live preview mode. This has been improved in Visual Studio 2013 (which was RTM'd today, 10/17/13).


I use a web browser window and set the url my localhost in place of the designer. view > "other windows" > "web browser". I then split the windows vertically or horizontaly.


I was able to work using the following trick:

  1. change the razor file's extension to .html
  2. Open the document
  3. with the document open, change file extension back to .cshtml

Congratulations, you now have a designer's view of the razor file. If you need razor intellisense, close and re-open it.