>This is a newbie question
>I'm learning WPF from Matthew McDonald's Pro WPF in C# 2008 and I was sailing along nicely till I came to the animation and graphics.
>The simple things look OK, but once you get past them, the programming seems awfully bitsy/bytesy with almost no GUI support from the IDE.
>
>Here are a few questions:
>Will any of that change with VS2010?
>In real world development, do most people use some kind of tools for these tasks or do they actually program them?
>What tools would they be using?

Can you elaborate a bit on what seems "bitsy/bytesy" (g) ?
I'd guess you're referring to things like animations (which you do mention), gradient brushes, 3D objects and maybe Paths/Geometries?

For all practical purposes those need to be created using a tool such as Expression Blend.......