Monday, February 18, 2008

Visual Studio 2005 extensions for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, version 1.1

An update has been published to this tool. For those who are unfamiliar to this, it enables Visual Studio developers to create SharePoint elements (lists, web parts, features, etc.) directly from Visual Studio, and deploy directly to your SharePoint installation.

It also enables you to export sites and lists from your SharePoint installation using a tool called SharePoint Solution Generator. When doing this, it automatically wraps the exported elements into a Visual Studio project, ready for you to develop in.

For download and more information, check out this page on Microsoft Download.

Here's what's new for version 1.1:

  • Support for "Web Solution Package" editing
    • View and edit all solution content (no more hidden generated content)
    • Create new Features and rename existing ones
    • Reorder elements between Features
    • Check for conflicts with existing Features
    • Change Feature activation order
  • Visual Basic support
  • List Instance item template
  • List Event Handler item template
  • File System template (project file deployed to the SharePoint application file system)
  • Bug fixes