Well I have finally had the time to indulge in Visual Studio LightSwitch 2011 RTM (henceforth LS), and it brings to Silverlight development what Dynamic Data (henceforth DD) brought to Web Forms with bells on.
It’s faster to develop an app with LS than it is with DD and that’s a fact. I decided to develop an app that I had need to run my little company but had been putting off for the last two years for lack of time. You know how a builder always has work to do on his own home never completed, well no more with LS I built it in just over one day see Figure 1.
Figure 1 – My App in one day
All I have to add is the Invoice report which I am going to use DevExpress – XtraReports for Light Switch
And the good news is that most of the Silverlight control venders are jumping in there with everything from How to add our controls to custom installs for LS;
- DevExpress - Learn more about the DevExpress extensions
- See the XraReports for LightSwitch in action with this video Getting Started with XtraReports for LightSwitch from Seth Juarez
- Video: DevExpress Visual Studio LightSwitch Extensions
- ComponentOne - Learn more about the ComponentOne extension
- Infragistics - Learn more about the Infragistics extension
- RSSBus - Learn more about the RSSBus extensions
- Telerik - Extend Visual Studio LightSwitch with Telerik Dev Tools
And there are tones of starter kits on Visual Studio Gallery.
The forums are very active;
Blogs I’ve found so far;
- Visual Studio LightSwitch Team Blog
- Sharing the goodness that is VB - Beth Massi
- From The Depths - Matt Thalman
- DevExpress Reporting Blog - Seth Juarez
- Tim Leung's Blog
I don’t expect this is an exhaustive list but it’s very encouraging and I will be joining the band waggon and build some of my own extensions and of course blog about it here.
P.S. I have not left DD this is just some new fun that will certainly compliment DD
P.P.S. I still have loads of stuff to put on NuGet so keep an eye on me here.
