LightSwitch Community & Content Rollup–January 2012

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 out here:

• LightSwitch Community & Content Rollup–September 2011
• LightSwitch Community & Content Rollup–October 2011
• LightSwitch Community & Content Rollup–November 2011
• LightSwitch Community & Content Rollup–December 2011

Looks like folks took a few well-deserved days to ramp back into the groove after the holidays (including myself). But there were still a lot of awesome things around LightSwitch this month, especially the number of submissions The Code Project had in the LightSwitch Star Contest. A lot of really interesting applications and some great case studies for LightSwitch as well as some for Azure. Check them out…

“LightSwitch Star” Contest

In November The Code Project launched the “LightSwitch Star” contest. They’re looking for apps that show off the most productivity in a business as well as apps that use extensions in a unique, innovative way. Prizes are given away each month. Soon they will announce the January winners as well as the two grand prize winners of an ASUS U31SD-DH31 Laptop !

Check out all the submission we had in January and make sure to log onto Code Project and vote for your favorites. Here’s a breakdown of the 13 apps that were submitted in January (see all 34 apps that have been submitted here). There are some very creative “business apps” here – like a campaign manager for Dungeons & Dragons!

• Profiling-Pro (video) – Project profiler that helps make sure your software projects are done on time
• Luminous Commands For LightSwitch - Luminous Commands provides two pieces of functionality that was missing from LS RTM but wanted by many users
• Access Control Manager - The Access Control Manager tracks user access to applications and other products (such as hardware, cellphones, etc.) by creating requests for access by the supervisor of the user
• Light Enterprise Solution - An article about applications that is an enterprise system targeted for Small & Medium Enterprises in Malaysia and Singapore
• LightSwitch Job Hunter Application - Job application tracker for those out of work built using Visual Studio LightSwitch 2011.
• Job Hunter LightSwitch Application (video) - This is a demo video of a free application that is intended to help job applicants. The application and source code are free to download
• Illuminous overview (video) - Illuminous is a comprehensive college management tool developed using Visual Studio LightSwitch.
• Data Centre: A Product Information and Promotion Management System - A system for easily and effectively storing product information and managing promotions.
• Visual Studio LightSwitch Application Database Script Generator - A tool to generate Sql server DB script from the LightSwitch internal database
• MyBizz Portal - The "smallest" LightSwitch application you have ever seen. A portal to other LightSwitch applications.
• Client Management System - A complete CRM solution that manages the entire customer lifecycle.
• BPO Productivity Tool - This is is primarily built as a custom LightSwitch Shell Extension in which I embed PRISM to manage all LightSwitch and non-LightSwitch views.
• Birthright Campaign Manager - Birthright Campaign Manager is an open source role playing computer aid for Birthright, a campaign setting for Dungeons & Dragons.

There are a lot of really interesting real-world LightSwitch production applications that were submitted. Some departmental apps, a few personal apps, some enterprise apps as well as a couple start-up companies. There are also some great case studies here for Azure, in particular:

• Data Centre: A Product Information and Promotion Management System
• Light Enterprise Solution
• Orion - MiniCRM LightSwitch and Azure

Developer Center Updates

Learn Page Updates

In December I kicked off a series aimed at beginner developers just getting started with LightSwitch and was featured in the MSDN Flash Newsletter. In January we updated the Learn page of the Developer Center to feature this series and it’s been getting some great traffic!

I also released the completed source code for the sample we build in the series: Beginning LightSwitch - Address Book Sample

How Do I Videos – Learning Made Easier

We also updated all the How Do I video pages to show the sequential list of videos so that you can easily get to the previous and next videos in the series. This makes it a lot easier to navigate through the over 20 videos in the correct order. Just click into any video page like this one and you will see the video navigator at the bottom of the page.

Notable Content this Month

Here’s some more of the fun things the team and community released in January.

Extensions released in January (see all 73 of them here!):

• Extended Text Box Extension
• Visual Studio LightSwitch application DB script generator

The team also released a control extension sample that you can learn from. Check out the announcement on the team blog:  Many-to-Many Control Released!

Build your own extensions by visiting the LightSwitch Extensibility page on the LightSwitch Developer Center.

Team Articles:

• Calling Web Services to Validate Data in Visual Studio LightSwitch
• Beginning LightSwitch–Address Book Sample
• Using Different Edit Screens Based on Record Types (Table Inheritance)
• Creating Cascading Drop Down Lists in Visual Studio LightSwitch
• Drop-down Lists Tips & Tricks

Community Articles:

• List Box That Can Be Ordered By The End-User
• Save (is a pain in the) As
• Using The Many-To-Many Control
• Using the ComponentOne Excel for Silverlight Control with LightSwitch
• Application Logo
• A LightSwitch Web Installer Wizard
• Creating a Visual Studio LightSwitch Screen Template
• Creating A LightSwitch Theme Extension using Expression Blend
• Extensions Made Easy: UseSmallImage and custom ordering.
• Centric RAD race: may the better technology win…
• LightSwitch Achievements: Chapter one (Introduction) – The idea
• Extensions made easy 1.11 : navigation sample explained
• Extending LightSwitch TextBox : Walk-Through
• Resources for Beginners
• An Easy Way to Create Many-to-Many Relationships

Presentations:

• LightSwitch is Hot! Really Hot!!
• Presented “LightSwitch for Business Application Development” in Microsoft Monday

Samples (see all of them here):

• Extended Text Box Extension - Source Code
• NavigationDemo: having some fun in LightSwitch with the EME navigation model
• Many to Many Control for Visual Studio LightSwitch
• Beginning LightSwitch - Address Book Sample

LightSwitch Team Community Sites

The Visual Studio LightSwitch Facebook Page has been increasing in activity thanks to you all. Become a fan! Have fun and interact with us on our wall. Check out the cool stories and resources.

Also 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)

Join Us!

The community has been using the hash tag #LightSwitch on twitter when posting stuff so it’s easier for me to catch it (although this is a common English word so you may end up with a few weird ones ;-)). Join the conversation! And if I missed anything please add a comment to the bottom of this post and let us know!

Enjoy!

Comments

• Anonymous
  February 02, 2012
  Thank you again for the links to our articles :)

• Anonymous
  February 03, 2012
  Thanks for writing them!! :-)

• Anonymous
  February 03, 2012
  Dear Mam, In the excel sheet, if there is 2 in Column B3,8 in Column C3, 10 in Column D3, 15 in Column in E3, 25 in Column F3 and likewise (All are Horizontally). So I want the Same in Vertically)  I mean to say that whatever no.s horizontally I want the same no. vertically and whatever no.s vertically I want the same no. horizontally. Sir Please send me this to my email ID i.e. bhaiswarpravin@gmail.com