Automating WSS v3/MOSS 2007 development environment setup: part XV – Useful external tools

Hi,

We now have most of what can offer Microsoft on our development platform.

Approximately all the developers I met use additional tools and settings to ease their work (and especially with SharePoint).

I selected few tools you may find useful, as their “features” are needed to develop on a Web platform:

  • a very good text editor: you need this kind of tool to live happy. Visual Studio does it well, notepad … forget it. So I selected a free one :
    • Notepad ++: You can find it easily on the net.
    • PSpad is another option you may consider.
    • UltraEdit is the reference, but you need to pay for it.
    • Sure I missed a lot of others in this small list.

 

  • a HTTP debugger / Web debugger: you need this kind of tool to see directly what HTML is exchanged between the browser and the server:
    • Fiddler2 is the most used one, as far as I know. You can find it here : https://fiddler2.com/fiddler2/ . I encourage you to watch the video explaining how to use it.

 

  • Debug View: this tool now available from Microsoft (formerly provided by SysInternals) is great to see how your code is run by the CLR runtime. You just add instructions like System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine(“what I want to display in debug view”), and you see it in DebugView window. A must, especially to test your deployment packages and methods.

 

  • a reflection tool to understand code: you may need this kind of tool, even if I cannot spend that much time on this on MSDN …

 

to this minimal list, add whatever you need or have the habits to work with.

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