Do  you ever have days when you sit back, take a breath and ponder just how rudimentary SharePoint Designer can feel when compared with a real IDE?

I know I do and it’s this very thought that compelled me to search for an alternative. What I ended up with was a quick and easy setup that allows me to have code collapse,  better syntax highlighting and jQuery Intellisense when I need to do some serious JavaScript editing.

Before I explain I want to make something clear. This is not for everyone. SharePoint Design is great for everything and anything SharePoint. It handles Wysiwyg editing, Web Part creation and much more, but some times I spend days upon days on just html, css and javascript. All I need is access to my layouts and branding files. If this sounds like you, keep on reading.

I have been using Visual Studio 2008 /2010 to edit files stored in my SharePoint Content database by simply mapping my Site Collection’s WebDAV to a drive! Follow these steps and you can too!

1) Map a network Drive

Enter your SharePoint site’s address and make sure you login with the SharePoint creds

In Visual Studio open a website

If you need to access a hidden folder simply type it and click open

Tada! SharePoint files from a content database in Visual Studio!

To add additional folders simply click the solution and “add” an “existing web site”

Here you can see 3 sites added. Instead of including the root directory I just mapped the 3 I would be using.

Now what about jQuery Intellisense?

Download the most current “Documentation: Visual Studio” on the jQuery website.

Include it in Javascript Directory. And add the following refrence at the top of your Javascript files.

Look! Intellisense on a JavaScript File located in the SharePoint Content Database!

You can even open Page Layouts, Edit and save.

Unfortunatly you can’t open Master Pages. But CSS and aspx pages are ok!

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 21st, 2010 at 3:44 pm and is filed under SharePoint 2010, html, jQuery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.