During SPC12, Preview 2 of the Microsoft Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio 2012 came out.  You can get it using the Web Platform Installer.  This made a few improvements in how we build Client Web Parts (App Parts).  Earlier this year, I provided a step-by-step on how to create SharePoint-hosted Client Web Parts as well as use the Client Object Model with it.  Although you can still follow the steps outlined there, this post will tell you what’s different between Preview 1 and Preview 2.

When you create the project, the first two steps look pretty much the same.

The next step has a new link to allow you to create a developer account with Office 365 Preview.

The good news is, they’ve added a wizard that helps you get stared with client web parts.  This wizard does three things for you.  It creates an application page for the client web part, it add it to elements.xml, and it registers the CSS files from SharePoint so that the content inside the IFRAME is styled appropriately.   Once you have created the project, add a new item, and choose Client Web Part (Host Web).

When you go to the next step, you get a new page in the wizard that gives you the option to create a new page for the client web part.

This is a nice addition because with Preview 1, we had to create this page manually and we had to add the necessary AllowFraming tag as well as everything else.  Now, this tag is created for us as well as JavaScript to load the CSS from the host web.  This lets you get started right away without having to worry about the wrong styles being used.

Now, if you want to use the SharePoint Object Model, you will still need to follow the steps I outlined in my previous post.  This includes adding a JavaScript file for this page and loading the SP.Runtime.js and SP.js files.  The wizard also wires up the elements.xml file for you, so that you don’t have to manually type this in anymore.

You will still need to add the properties yourself which I still owe you all a post for, but I promise it’s coming soon. :)  When you run the app, and add the app part, it should look something like this.

One thing, that you need to watch out for is that there is a bug that affects Internet Explorer 9.  When you add the App Part to the host web with the Visual Studio debugger attached, you will get multiple JavaScript errors.  However, if you keep clicking continue, you will eventually get through them.  The work-around is to either add the app part to the page in a browser not attached to the debugger or to upgrade to Internet Explorer 10 (or use another browser).