Episerver DeveloperTools - UI Refresh

Been busy with some UI refreshment effort on Episerver DeveloperTools.

Latest version (v3.5) released on NuGet feed has following changes:

• now UI rewritten in Razor (yes! Episerver developer tools were still written in WebForms).
• With rewrite to Razor view engine and due to some issue in Episerver module delivery mechanism (specifically when module is served from Zip archive) included web.config file is ignored resulting in runtime errors (more info here). Because of this change - Episerver.DeveloperTools is served as “expanded” module - meaning that all view files are copied to target project under appropriate protected module directory. NB! Upgrade from previous versions have been tested in sandbox project, but if you face some runtime issues - so just you know of this change!
• also dependency is now set on Episerver UI [11.21.1, 12). Which means that UI will be according to new blue-ish theme.

• DeveloperTools package have many menu items and might be so that you will have to scroll in order to get to tools outside visible menu area
• Some smaller UI fixes are applied (like adding icons to buttons, etc).

NB! Idea in next iteration is to split all tools apart into separate packages. For example - EPiServer.DeveloperTools.IoC or EPiServer.DeveloperTools.LoadedAssemblies. Split would give you an option to install only what you need to use. Still EPiServer.DeveloperTools package would have reference to all the other packages (very similar as we have seen in Microsoft.AspNetCore.App package) and would act as “umbrella” package to pull all required packages. Please give me feedback on this idea (pros/cons) in comments below.

If you have any other idea what would be great addition to the tool belt - please reach me out!

To finish this post I’m adding module dependency tool just to remind you how beautiful your Episerver project module dependencies might look :)

Happy tooling!

[eof]