LightSwitch Community & Content Rollup- October 2013
A while back I started posting a monthly 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 .
This month was an exciting month - we did it! We released Visual Studio 2013. In just a little over a year we released another major version of Visual Studio and we couldn’t have done it without you.
Visual Studio 2013 Released! – Thank You LightSwitch Community
On October 17th we released Visual Studio 2013. We are super excited to get this release out the door and into your hands. Visual Studio 2013 contains a ton of new tools for developers to build best of breed, modern applications and services.
On behalf of the LightSwitch team I want to thank all of you who reported bugs and suggestions through our forum, connect, UserVoice, our team blog, and emails to the team.
And we’ve been cranking out content on the team blog on all our new features. For starters, all the goodness we released starting in Visual Studio 2012 Update 2 is also part of Visual Studio 2013. This means you can build cross-browser, mobile-first HTML5 apps that can run on any modern touch device and optionally publish these apps to a SharePoint 2013 / Office 365 app catalog.
In addition, you’ll find a lot of new LightSwitch features in this release, things like:
- New Office 365 Cloud Business App project type
- Better Team Development Support:
- Database Projects (SSDT) Support
- Solution Explorer Enhancements & Multi-Designer Support
- New Table Control
- DateTimeOffset Support
- Choice List Improvements
- Created By / Modified By fields on tables
- Person Business Type
- SharePoint social & Lync integration
- And much more!
Also check out the updated content on the Visual Studio LightSwitch Developer Center.
LightSwitch Extensibility Toolkit for Visual Studio 2013
With the official release of Visual Studio 2013 we also released an updated LightSwitch Extensibility Toolkit for VS2013. This allows you to create LightSwitch extensions for Visual Studio 2013.
Download: LightSwitch Extensibility Toolkit for Visual Studio 2013
For more information, samples and resources for learning how to build LightSwitch extensions please see: Extending Visual Studio LightSwitch
Beginning LightSwitch Series for Visual Studio 2013
In October I also (re)-started a very popular beginner series for those of you just getting started with LightSwitch. This time though, I’m focusing on the HTML client and Visual Studio 2013. So far:
- Part 1: What’s in a Table? Describing Your Data
- Part 2: Feel the Love. Defining Data Relationships
- Part 3: Screen Templates, Which One Do I Choose?
Keep an eye out for the rest of the tutorials right here: Beginning LightSwitch in Visual Studio 2013 series
Visual Studio Virtual Launch Event – Save the Date! November 13th
The entire Visual Studio team has created a bunch of awesome content, live streaming keynotes, and on demand videos for the virtual launch event that you can watch right here on November 13th:
https://events.visualstudio.com/
We’ll be broadcasting the keynote live, and the Virtual Launch will be packed full of product demos and customer success stories. And, for the first time, it will be available in multiple languages and on multiple devices!
LightSwitch at Silicon Valley Code Camp
On October 5th I spoke at Silicon Valley Code Camp -- the biggest code camp in the world! I delivered two sessions that were very well attended -- I think the room held about 50 people and both sessions were filled. Thanks all for coming!
In the first session I focused on building HTML5-based business apps with LightSwitch and deploying them to Azure. And the second I focused on the new Cloud Business App project in Visual Studio 2013 that streamlines the way you build custom business apps for SharePoint 2013 / Office 365.
Read my trip report and download the slides and demos: Trip Report -- Silicon Valley Code Camp
Happy Halloween from Xpert360!
Keeping the Xpert360 tradition, they released another colorful theme for the holidays —this time a pumpkin theme for Halloween (my favorite holiday of the year). Check it out!
Lightning Series - Pumpkin Theme CE
Check out all of Xpert360’s awesome extensions here.
More Notable Content this Month
Did I miss anything significant? Post a comment below!
Extensions released this month ( see over 100 of them here! ):
- Lightning Series - Pumpkin Theme CE (Xpert360)
- LightSwitch Extensibility Toolkit for Visual Studio 2013 (LightSwitch Team)
- Essential Studio for LightSwitch update ( Syncfusion, Inc)
Samples ( see over 100 of them here! ):
- Visual Studio LightSwitch OData Business Layer Consumed by AngularJs (Adefwebserver)
- Creating a Cloud Business App with a Social Newsfeed (LightSwitch Team)
- LightSwitch Screen Template Extension Sample for Visual Studio 2013 (including an HTML screen template example) (LightSwitch Team)
- LightSwitch Cosmopolitan Shell & Theme Extension for Visual Studio 2013 (LightSwitch Team)
- LightSwitch Value Control Extension Sample for Visual Studio 2013 (LightSwitch Team)
- LightSwitch Detail Control Extension Sample for Visual Studio 2013 (LightSwitch Team)
- LightSwitch Stack Panel Control Extension Sample for Visual Studio 2013 (LightSwitch Team)
- LightSwitch Business Type Extension Sample for Visual Studio 2013 (LightSwitch Team)
- LightSwitch Shell Extension Sample for Visual Studio 2013 (LightSwitch Team)
- LightSwitch Smart Layout Control Extension Sample for Visual Studio 2013 (LightSwitch Team)
Team Articles:
- Beginning LightSwitch in VS 2013 Part 1: What’s in a Table? Describing Your Data (Beth Massi)
- Beginning LightSwitch in VS 2013 Part 2: Feel the Love - Defining Data Relationships (Beth Massi)
- Beginning LightSwitch in VS 2013 Part 3: Screen Templates, Which One Do I Choose? (Beth Massi)
- How To Build an Office 365 Cloud Business App with Visual Studio 2013 (Andy Kung)
- HTML Upload Control For LightSwitch SharePoint Apps (Matt Sampson)
- Trip Report: Silicon Valley Code Camp (Beth Massi)
- Using the Person Business Type (Karol Zadora-Przylecki, Ravi Eda)
- Visual Studio 2013 Released – Thank You LightSwitch Community!
Community Videos:
Robert MacLean spoke at TechDays in in Johannesburg and Cape Town in October. If you missed it, check out his LightSwitch talk on YouTube!
Community Articles:
This month I’d like to give a shout out to a couple new bloggers, The LOB Factory and Blog of an IT Guy who have been posting about some more advanced LightSwitch topics. Also a TON of content pumping out this month from LightSwitchHelpWebsite.com (as always). Great job and keep it up!
- Allow LightSwitch Users To Self-Register and Change Passwords Using MVC
- Concurrent Ria Service (and Web Api) requests in LightSwitch
- Creating a WCF RIA Service for Visual Studio LightSwitch 2013
- Creating an AngularJS CRUD Application Using Visual Studio LightSwitch
- Embedding LightSwitch in enterprise services (part 1/n)
- Extension methods for non-autoexecutable filters in the LightSwitch Silverlight client
- Free LightSwitch Holiday Theme – Pumpkin
- Guide to VS2013 LightSwitch HTML Themes
- How To Create An Expanded LightSwitch 2013 Project – Updated!
- LightSwitch 2013 User Management – HTML – Part 1
- LightSwitch 2013 User Management – HTML – Part 2
- LightSwitch 2013 How To Use – GetExpandedUser
- LightSwitch 2013 – Breaking Changes To Scaffolding
- LightSwitch based Multi-Player Gaming Pattern using SignalR–Part III
- LightSwitch based Multi-Player Gaming Pattern using SignalR–Part II
- LightSwitch based Multi-Player Gaming Pattern using SignalR–Part I
- LightSwitch HTML Client – Geolocation
- LightSwitch html5 SPA - Asset Manager App
- LightSwitch html5 SPA - Audit Manager App
- LightSwitch html5 SPA - Project Manager App
- LightSwitch Survey: Handling Complex Business Logic Using WCF RIA Services
- Rename LightSwitch 2013 HTMLClient
- Ubi Doobie Doo or How to show off LightSwitch, Datazen or just about anything in Windows 8 using my living room wall, a projector, Kinect and Ubi.
- Using JayData to Consume the Visual Studio LightSwitch OData Business Layer in a AngularJs CRUD Application
- Using MVC With Visual Studio LightSwitch
- Using TypeScript in LightSwitch
Forum Answerers
Thanks to all our LightSwitch forums contributors! Thank you for helping make the LightSwitch community a better place. It’s selfless dedication like this that makes our community rock.
Top 5 forum answerers in October:
| Display Name | Answers | Posts |
| ADefwebserver | 19 | 71 |
| Justin Anderson | 18 | 48 |
| Xpert360 | 14 | 73 |
| Angie xu | 14 | 47 |
| Yunjie Pei | 14 | 40 |
Keep up the great work guys!
LightSwitch Team Community Sites
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, #VS2013 #LightSwitch)
Enjoy!
Comments
Anonymous
November 07, 2013
Just getting started with LightSwitch. I really appreciate you putting this rollup together!Anonymous
November 07, 2013
You are very welcome! And welcome to the LightSwitch community :-)Anonymous
November 07, 2013
Thanks Massi!Anonymous
November 11, 2013
Hi, I know we are all excited with the new features of vs2013, but most if not all the highlights of whats New are on the HTML client, pardon me for asking but does this mean there isn't anything new for the desktop client. If there is, kindly put together a roll up of the updates to the desktop client. CheersAnonymous
November 11, 2013
Hi Alex, This is what I found in the community this month. If I missed something please feel free to post the link in the comments and I'll add it to the article. Also you'll find a lot of the new VS2013 features are not client specific like the team development, designer improvements, and data-related features. Cheers, -BethAnonymous
November 12, 2013
Enjoying some of the new features of VS 2013 LS, but can't seem to get any of the VS 2012 LS samples apps/demos/etc. to open in VS 2013 LS. Am I doing something that is not supported, or something wrong?