Using a command interpreter at design time

A method comprising:

• displaying a software application design environment, the software application design environment facilitating a testing of objects included in an application;
• moving a selected object included in the application from a visual tree to a command interpreter, wherein the visual tree is generated by recursively traversing through child objects of the selected object, and obtaining one or more properties for each child object via a reflection process that inspects an object type;
• displaying the visual tree in the software application design environment;
• synchronizing the visual tree with a current design view in the software application design environment;
• setting the selected object as a current object in the command interpreter upon being received from the visual tree;
• and
• performing an operation to test a functionality of the application on a particular command interpreter object designated as the current object during design time, the operation performed via code entered directly into the command interpreter and without a compilation of the application.

A software development system comprising:

• a processor configured to execute an application;
• and
• a design environment configured to facilitate a testing of objects included in the application, the design environment including;
• a visual tree component configured to provide a visual representation of at least one of the objects included in the application, the visual representation facilitating moving a selected object from a visual tree representation of the selected object to a command interpreter representation of the selected object, wherein the visual tree is generated by recursively traversing through child objects of the selected object, and obtaining one or more properties for each child object via a reflection process that inspects an object type, and wherein the visual tree is synchronized with a current design view in the design environment;
• and
• a command interpreter component configured to perform an operation to test a functionality of the application on a particular command interpreter object designated as a current object during design time without a compilation of the application, the command interpreter component further configured to set the selected object as the current object within a command interpreter upon being received from a visual tree.