Developing for SharePoint 2010 with jQuery Intellisense and more!
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!
January 29th, 2010 at 11:44 am
This is a great post. Thanks Tom. Will make my jQuery edit a lot easier
March 7th, 2010 at 1:55 pm
Dude, you need to blog more often, the few posts you have made are excellent.
Please come back and post more.
June 1st, 2010 at 11:05 pm
Nice post, Tom. I also make SharePoint not look like SharePoint. Are you on Twitter? I’d like to connect.
October 14th, 2010 at 6:17 pm
30. Hello, your write-up is extremely instructive and I really like the content exactly where in every element is extremely important. By some means, it provides me much more understanding about things that’s happening these days.
December 30th, 2010 at 11:11 am
Man this is awesome. Editing the master page would have made this so complete. I don’t know why this isn’t just supported ootb. Thanks Tom.
March 12th, 2011 at 4:45 pm
Tom, do you know how i might be able to add jquery intellisense to SharePoint designer 2010? Thanks in advance
April 8th, 2011 at 7:10 am
I’m unable to map my sharepoint site to Network drive. Throws ‘Windows cannot access …’ error
January 27th, 2012 at 5:59 am
Great Post , Editing from VS it’s great
March 5th, 2012 at 6:22 am
Hi Tom,
Your Post is simply awesome!!!!
But in my case i couldn’t able to map network drive. It Throws “Windows Cannot access”
I am in windows server 2008 64 bit OS. Can you Please help me in this?
Thanks In Advance!!!!!
Sandeep
March 5th, 2012 at 9:09 am
Hey Sandeep,
In Windows 2008 the Desktop Experience feature needs to be installed to be able to use WebDav (Which is what the mapping as a network drive does)
Hope that helps you and others who have issues with this.
Thanks
Tom