JavaScript Intellisense in Orcas Beta 1
I posted some links recently to enhanced JavaScript support in Orcas but I hadn't had much luck getting it to work myself in the CTP. On Friday I got hold of the Orcas Beta 1 VPC and I've just had the chance to play around with a few things. The first thing I did was to install ASP.NET AJAX on there as it's not there out of the box. Then I brought across an existing ASP.NET AJAX project without any issues. That was easy... :-) Now I was keen to explore the enhanced JavaScript Intellisense that I've been telling people about at recent events...
I now get Intellisense (including method signatures) for my methods and types:
And I get Intellisense for ASP.NET AJAX types and methods whether implicitly or explicitly referenced via the <ScriptManager> tag
I even get this in JS files provided I reference the external JavaScript libraries using an XML comment as below (note, VS automagically adds this comment for you when you create an "AJAX Client Library" JS file):
I can also use XML comments to add additional information for Intellisense - here I've added function summary information, parameter and return type information and descriptions so Intellisense can prompt me with this information when I come to use the method:
The only thing I haven't got working is type inference. Here I was expecting to be prompted with string members:
Wow - that's a great set of features and a *huge* improvement over where we are today... You tend to forget how much you rely on Intellisense (whether or not you agree with Charles Petzold) so living without sensible Intellisense in JavaScript has started to get painful. Roll on Visual Studio Orcas...
Links
- Download Orcas Beta 1 VPC (you also need the base image and Virtual PC 2004 SP1, Virtual Server 2005 R2 or Virtual PC 2007 (required for Windows Vista)
- MSDN subscribers can download both the VPC and installation media ISO images
- Overview of Visual Studio Orcas Whitepaper
Technorati tags: visual studio, orcas, intellisense, javascript