Developing add-ins using JavaScript

Developing extensions in JavaScript and HTML is more familiar to web developers than developing extensions in managed or native code, and is thus easier.

One of the benefits of developing Microsoft Expression Web add-ins in JavaScript is that you can use Expression Web as your development environment.

Using Expression Web for add-in development

In addition to the JavaScript files that provide the logic for an add-in, you can construct panels and dialog boxes using HTML and control their appearance with cascading style sheets.

Although Expression Web does not have a built-in JavaScript debugger, you can use alert() statements to display the value of variables, code execution locations, and so on. Additionally, including developer="yes" in the add-in manifest creates a debug console that can be written to, and that has some rudimentary JavaScript error reporting.

For more information about configuring these options in the manifest, see Debugging options in the manifest.

Configuring the add-in development environment

Treat the add-in project as a single site in Expression Web to simplify the process of managing the assets that your add-in uses.

A simple panel add-in site structure might look something like the following:

See Also

Concepts

JavaScript programming reference
Packaging an add-in for distribution

Other Resources

The add-in manifest

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