LightSwitch Community & Content Rollup–August 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 I took a nice, long camping vacation in the sierras around Lake Tahoe -- but that doesn’t mean I was completely out of touch the entire month (although I have to say it was wonderful not getting any cell phone coverage while I was up there ;)). There was still a lot of activity in the community in August and we also announced a live, public meeting with the team! Read on…

Visual Studio LightSwitch “Town Hall” Announced

Are you interested in the future of Visual Studio LightSwitch? Join us on Thursday Sept 12th 8AM PST and see what we’ve been working on and ask questions in this live, public, online meeting. We will discuss the LightSwitch roadmap and product direction. We’ll start with a demonstration of the new features in Visual Studio 2013 and then we’ll open the floor to questions. This is your chance to speak openly and directly with the LightSwitch team!

Please visit the LightSwitch forum for more information:

Live from Redmond - Visual Studio LightSwitch Town Hall
Thursday, September 12, 2013 | 8:00AM – 9:30AM (PDT, Redmond Time)

And if you can’t make it (or we reach max capacity), we will record the meeting so you can watch it later.

Visual Studio 2012 Update 4 RC 2 Released!

Visual Studio 2012 Update 4 RC2 was released a couple weeks ago. If you are experiencing the localization bug in VS2012 Update 3 that was reported, we recommend installing this for the fix. The RC has a “go-live” license so it is supported in production environments. Thanks to all of you that reported this bug.

Also a reminder: The Azure 2.1 SDK was released in July which has support for Visual Studio 2013 Preview. This SDK is required for LightSwitch publishing to Azure in VS2013 Preview. Open up the LightSwitch publishing wizard and it will walk you through installing the SDK using Web Platform Installer.

.NET Universe 2013 Poster

If you like geeky posters on your office wall, this one is pretty cool (especially if you like Star Trek). The “.NET universe” poster shows the main .NET SDKs, libraries and packages classified by application type and package type. It shows where different .NET technologies fit in, including LightSwitch!

Download: .NET Universe 2013 Poster

New Article on InformIT

In the final article of his series introducing the new HTML client in Visual Studio LightSwitch 2012, Alessandro Del Sole, author of Microsoft Visual Studio LightSwitch Unleashed, describes a great organizational opportunity: publishing LightSwitch HTML apps to Office 365.

READ Part 4: Publishing a LightSwitch HTML Application to Office 365 via SharePoint 2013

And if you missed the other articles in the series here they are:

• Building Mobile, Touch-Oriented Business Apps with the HTML Client in Visual Studio LightSwitch 2012
• Customizing Your LightSwitch HTML Apps with Authentication, JavaScript Code, Custom Styles, and Queries
• Publishing LightSwitch HTML Applications to Windows Azure

Thank you Alessandro!

MEAP Book Update: Chapter 9 of “LightSwitch in Action” Now Available

If you’ve signed up for the Manning Early Access Program (MEAP) for LightSwitch in Action from Dan Beall and Greg Lutz, they released chapter 9 this month – Making Screens More Useful.

Even if you haven’t signed up, you can read chapter 1 for free here: Introducing LightSwitch

More Notable Content this Month

Did I miss anything significant? Post a comment below!

Extensions released this month (see over 100 of them here!):

• HTML LightSwitch Documentation for MSLS.JS (JLarue) - This help documentation provides you with a unique perspective of the MSLS.JS JavaScript parsed to perfection for both the novice or expert JavaScript Developer who is interested in understanding the under-pinnings of the HTML 5 LightSwitch client.

Team Articles:

• Choice List improvements (Amr Altahlawi)
• Calling ASP.NET Web API from a LightSwitch Silverlight Client (Beth Massi)
• How to Get a Stack Trace in LightSwitch (Matt Thalman)
• How to Use a Picker as a Filter in your LightSwitch apps (Beth Massi)
• Spice Up Your HTML Client UI With Code (Rohit Agrawal)
• Team Development Series – Part 4: Testing the LightSwitch Application (Saar Shen)
• Upgrading your LightSwitch projects (Raghuveer Gopalakrishnan)

Community Articles:

Here are the more notable articles I found this month. I’d like to give a shout-out to a new LightSwitch blogger on the street, Dirk Strauss, a developer from South Africa who posted 5 LightSwitch articles in August. Keep up the great work everyone!

• Advanced LightSwitch debugging (part 1 of N): getting production data in your localDB
• Advanced LightSwitch debugging (part 2 of N): Debug in local IIS with ability to log in with any application user apart from ‘TestUser’.
• Advanced LightSwitch debugging (part 3 of N): debug a production app locally with production database connection 
• Extending LightSwitch – Deeper Down The Rabbit Hole
• Existing Data And Visual Studio LightSwitch
• How To Perform Angular.Js Functionality Using Visual Studio LightSwitch HTML Client
• How to prepare succinctly a LightSwitch training?
• In search for enterprise ready reporting and business intelligence in LightSwitch (part 1 of N)  
• LightSwitch Data – Fleshing Out Your Application  
• LightSwitch Employee Vacation Tracker Using The ComponentOne HTML Scheduler Control
• LightSwitch Themes – A Change Is As Good As A Holiday 
• Visual Studio LightSwitch – True Power Lies In Simplicity

Top Forum Answerers

A while back I had to remove this section from my rollups due to inaccurate data. I’ve been told that these internal reporting problems have been fixed, and by the looks of the rankings below, if you’ve spent any time in the LightSwitch forum on MSDN it feels right to me.

Thanks to all our forum contributors! Thank you for helping make the LightSwitch community a better place.

Top 5 forum answerers in July & August:

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, #VS2012 #LightSwitch)

Enjoy!