Visual Studio extensions for Windows SharePoint Services

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Visual Studio extensions for Windows SharePoint Services is a tool for developing custom SharePoint applications. It provides developers with a familiar development environment within Visual Studio. The extensions include a collection of useful project and item templates for many of the most common development activities in SharePoint.

The following Visual Studio 2008 project templates are included with Visual Studio extensions for SharePoint Services:

  • Web Part
  • Team Site Definition
  • Blank Site Definition
  • List Definition
  • Empty SharePoint Project

The following Visual Studio 2008 item templates are included with Visual Studio extensions for SharePoint Services:

  • Web Part
  • Custom Field
  • List Definition (with optional Event Receiver)
  • Content Type (with optional Event Receiver)
  • Module
  • List Instance
  • List Event Handler
  • Template

The extensions also provide one-click deployment and F5 debugging. Many tools such as WSP Builder and STSDEV require developers to maintain Feature.xml and Manifest.xml files for SharePoint solution packaging into a Web solution package (WSP).

The extensions provide a graphical user interface for organizing and packaging SharePoint solutions and do not require users to maintain their own Feature.xml and Manifest.xml files. Another difference between the extensions and other SharePoint tools such as WSP Builder is that they do not require developers to use the typical 12 Hive folder structure in their Visual Studio project structures.

SharePoint Solution Generator

The SharePoint Solution Generator is a part of Visual Studio extensions for Windows SharePoint Services. Developers can use it to generate a site definition from an existing SharePoint site. Developers can use a Web browser to first customize a list on a new or existing SharePoint site and then use the SharePoint Solution Generator to generate list definition files. For more information about using the SharePoint Solution Generator, see the Visual Studio extensions Windows SharePoint Services User Guide.

Retired Content

This content is outdated and is no longer being maintained. It is provided as a courtesy for individuals who are still using these technologies. This page may contain URLs that were valid when originally published, but now link to sites or pages that no longer exist.

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