SharePoint Developer Tools in Visual Studio 11

SharePoint Developer Tools in Visual Studio 11

This article takes an introductory look at the new facilities announced for SharePoint development in the upcoming version of Visual Studio.

SharePoint development is well supported in the current version of Visual Studio.

Adding on to these features, Visual Studio 11 takes the tool to the next level through easier and more intuitive interfaces, new templates and designers.

Here are the key highlights.

(1) Sandboxed Visual Web Parts

Sandboxed visual web parts can be created in Visual Studio 11.

(2) Better Support for Sandbox Solutions

Compiler detects an error when farm-specific API calls are used in sandbox solutions.

(3) Silverlight web part project template
You can create Silverlight application or specify an existing application and creates a web part project to associate the Silverlight application.

(4) Javascript Debugging and Intellisense for Javascript.
Also, javascript files stored in the SharePoint content database can be referenced within SharePoint projects.

(5) Performance Profiling tools
Using Visual Studio 11, you can now dentify areas that affect performance in your SharePoint applications by profiling the performance.

(6) Publish SharePoint solutions to remote SharePoint servers.

In addition to local deployment, you can actually publish the SharePoint application to remote sites too.

(7) New project templates and Project Item templates
eg the new Site column project item template. New designers such as Content type and List designers

Conclusion

I hope this article gives you an exciting view of the new features being introduced in Visual Studio 11 to provide a stronger development tool support for SharePoint 11.

Happy Coding!