Sharing the goodness…
Beth Massi is a Senior Program Manager on the Visual Studio team at Microsoft and a community champion for business application developers. Learn more about Beth.
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Last Fall I started posting a rollup of interesting community happenings, content, samples and extensions popping up around Visual Studio LightSwitch. If you missed those rollups you can check them all out here: LightSwitch Community & Content Rollups. I know I’m a little late with this one, but I took a couple days vacation around Independence Day last week so that I could move into my new home (which looks great by the way)!
The big news in June was the announcement around our roadmap in making it easy to build HTML5-based companion clients for your LightSwitch applications. Having the option to build companion clients for tablet devices without having to know HTML5 or JavaScript is a big deal. If you know data modeling, you can use LightSwitch in Visual Studio 2012 to build out OData services that can be used by a variety of clients. The next obvious step is to provide a development experience for building these clients.
This was a big ask on our UserVoice site for a long time and I can’t tell you how hard it was to keep it a secret ;-). We are all excited that we can now talk with you about our plans and get feedback from you on this early preview. It’s amazing how overwhelmingly positive the feedback has been so far. Get the bits and all the resources you need here:
The preview is a pre-built VHD that comes with a walkthrough tutorial that guides you through the experiences that are working so that you can get an idea of where we’re headed and let us know what you think. There are a lot of great conversations going on in the forums and we’re waiting for your feedback! Just check out some of the great comments on the forums, twitter and our team blog:
Thanks to everyone -- early adopters, community rock stars, and lots of new faces – for helping to make LightSwitch even better!
At TechEd North America Jason Zander announced the LightSwitch HTML client and a couple weeks later at TechEd Europe we made the bits available. Jason showed off some quick demos in both of his keynotes that got us a lot of great press. Jay Schmelzer (Director for Visual Studio BizApp tools and also my manager) also did a few sessions and was interviewed on the Visual Studio Toolbox show. Check out some of the TechEd content we have available online:
As a fallout from all the hype around TechEd, the press picked up our announcement and wrote up some news articles which helped get the word out. Some of them were:
I sat down with Joe Binder, the Senior PM working on the LightSwitch HTML Client, to shoot a video that we launched onto the home page of Channel 9 that got over 25,000 views the first week! In this interview, Joe walks through the design experience and shows us how easy it is to customize the styling and controls.
Channel 9 Interview: Early Look at the Visual Studio LightSwitch HTML Client
I recommend watching one of the high quality recordings here so you can see the demo better:
Jan van der Haegen continues his journey into the depths of LightSwitch with his regular column in the June issue:
Leading LightSwitch: Tales of Advanced LightSwitch Client Customizations Enjoy these tales of creating custom applications that show off the versatility and ease of use LightSwitch offers. You will also get a glimpse of how a real pro works with clients.
Extensions (see all 89 of them here!):
Xpert360 keeps cranking out the LightSwitch extensions! In June they released an extension that lets you clone screens and queries. This has been a popular request from the community and it’s awesome to see Xpert360 fill this gap:
Samples (see all 82 of them here):
Team Articles:
Community Content:
Become a fan of Visual Studio LightSwitch on Facebook. Have fun and interact with us on our wall. Check out the cool stories and resources. Here are some other places you can find the LightSwitch team: LightSwitch MSDN Forums LightSwitch Developer Center LightSwitch Team Blog LightSwitch on Twitter (@VSLightSwitch, #VisualStudio #LightSwitch)
Enjoy!
Great post, two LightSwitch OData rticles that I *just* did (and missed your deadline):
LightSwitch Restaurant Manager (OData and Unity3D) lightswitchhelpwebsite.com/.../LightSwitch-Restaurant-Manager-OData-and-Unity3D.aspx and
A DotNetNuke HTML Module Calling Visual Studio LightSwitch Using OData
lightswitchhelpwebsite.com/.../A-DotNetNuke-HTML-Module-Calling-Visual-Studio-LightSwitch-Using-OData.aspx
You are a dynamo Beth. I don't know where you find the time and energy to keep on top of all this!
These content roll-ups are a go-to resource for me. Thanks a bunch, and keep on truckin'.
Cheers, Paul