Brennan’s Blog

I recently started work on small tool called JavaScript Browser which will run as a standalone Windows application as well as a Tool Window for Visual Studio 2008. I have made good progress in the time I have put into it. I now have the XML document format defined for the initial release. I am using XSD to constrain the XML document and to provide Intellisense as I write the XML documents. I am then using XSL and CSS to display the documentation in the JavaScript Browser which is using the WebBrowser control for the viewer.

If you would like to dig into the details you can find everything with the following links.

Templates

• XmlDocComments.xsd
• XmlDocComments.xsl
• XmlDocComments.css

Documentation (XSL/CSS styled)

• JavaScriptCore.xml
• jQuery.xml
• Prototype.xml

Software

• SmallSharpTools.JavaScriptBrowser-src.zip
• SmallSharpTools.JavaScriptBrowser-StandAloneSetup.msi
• SmallSharpTools.JavaScriptBrowser-VSPackageSetup.msi

I have mostly done ASP.NET and general web development so I have learned a lot about WinForm and Visual Studio Extensibility while working on this project. I am surprised how easy it is to create a Tool Window for Visual Studio 2008. And since I have isolated the majority of the functionality into a control library that also works with the standalone application I am basically just working on a WinForms application at this point. And with a bulk of the hard work done now I simply have to create and load the various script library definitions into the TreeView and make it work as a navigation control to to the various JavaScript libraries, classes and functions.

Once the basic first release is ready I plan to start taking in submissions for script library definitions. I will need to create a submission form and guidelines at XmlDocComments.com where there will be a database of all of the various XML documents that will work with the JavaScript Browser. I also plan to export this documentation using XSL to other useful formats so that the documentation can be used in other systems, like Aptana, Eclipse and IDEA.

The project is currently hosted on my Subversion server but will be moved to Google Code this week so that I can start collaborating with a few others who are interested in binding the JavaScript Browser to the context of the editor so that it can automatically jump to the relevant documentation in the viewer. If you are interested in working on this project as well, drop me an email. One idea that has come up over email within the small group of volunteers so far is to add the binding to the editor is to use DXCore. With Mark Miller coming to Deeper in .NET on April 5th I hope he can give me a quick hands-on demonstration of how I could hook up the editor to the Tool Window. I hope he brings Sara.