A COLLECTION OF LINKS FOR LOVERS OF I.T. Dirk Strauss . . . . Feature link: Windows 8.1 Mail Experience Microsoft Touts the Windows 8.1 Mail Experience, Paul Thurrott Other Visual Studio Start Page: Through the ages, Tony Goodhew What's the Best Way for a Programmer to Learn a New Language?…
A COLLECTION OF LINKS FOR LOVERS OF I.T. Dirk Strauss . . . . Feature link: TweetBrander wants you Twitter user? TweetBrander wants you!, Josh Benson Other Hide internet searches by browsing privately, geeklift Google is building Chrome OS straight into Windows 8, Tom Warren #945 – Lazy Instantiation, an Easier…
Any developer involved in LightSwitch will know her name. Programming since the age of 8, Beth Massi and her blog is an excellent resource for anyone wanting to get involved with this awesome technology. Below she answers a few questions about herself, LightSwitch and Microsoft.
Bio
I’m a Senior Program Manager on the Visual Studio team at Microsoft and a community champion for business application developers. Before Microsoft, I spent 15 years building business apps for small businesses as well as large enterprises.
I am a frequent speaker at various software development events and you can find me on a variety of developer sites including MSDN.com, Channel 9, and my blog www.bethmassi.com. Follow me on twitter @BethMassi (more…)
A COLLECTION OF LINKS FOR LOVERS OF I.T. Dirk Strauss . . . . Feature link: Visual Studio 2013 New LightSwitch Features My Favorite New LightSwitch Features in Visual Studio 2013, Beth Massi Other Visual Studio 2012.4 RC 3 Available, Brian Harry A better switch with Lambdas in .NET, Part…
A COLLECTION OF LINKS FOR LOVERS OF I.T. Dirk Strauss . . . . Feature link: LightSwitch Using ActiveReports Using ActiveReports with LightSwitch Application, C1_Deepankar Other The FBI Is Now at War with Syrian Hackers, Rebecca Greenfield BlackBerry Messenger iOS App Being Reviewed By Apple For Past 2 Weeks, Ken…
A COLLECTION OF LINKS FOR LOVERS OF I.T. Dirk Strauss . . . . Feature link: LightSwitch Content Rollup LightSwitch Community & Content Rollup–August 2013, Beth Massi Other Microsoft Virtual Academy–Your professional Virtual Learning Environment, Lee Stott Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Data-Tier Application Framework (August 2013), Microsoft Downloads What’s new…
Existing Data – LightSwitch has shown us this week how easy it is to create a fully data aware application in a very short amount of time and with minimal developer effort. But what about adding existing data?
I received a message from a reader in Johannesburg this week. His company used an Access database for one of their applications, but needed to migrate away from Access (probably because the data grew large enough to warrant the use of SQL). They had already created the SQL database and migrated the data, and now needed to quickly create a user interface.
His question to me was what technology he could use to create a GUI in the shortest amount of time, without having to learn how to program. Obviously I suggested LightSwitch. (more…)
LightSwitch Themes – One of the most pivotal moments for me during my LightSwitch adventures were themes. If you have been following the previous articles, you will know that LightSwitch brings exceptional ease of use to your development repertoire.
One of the most confining areas of an application is the look and feel. Once you have created an app, it becomes extremely difficult to change the look and feel without being an extremely painful experience. With LightSwitch Themes, this is no longer a problem. The process to follow to change a LightSwitch Theme isn’t immediately obvious. But this doesn’t make the process any more difficult to perform.
LightSwitch Data – If you have followed the previous two articles I wrote (Visual Studio LightSwitch – True Power Lies In Simplicity and Extending LightSwitch – Deeper Down The Rabbit Hole), you will by now know that our little application is becoming more sophisticated and feature rich.
I have to hasten to add, our application is becoming more feature rich without us having to do much work. It seems almost like stealing candy from a baby, and I almost feel guilty for getting so much satisfaction from creating with LightSwitch.
If by now you aren’t hooked on LightSwitch, I don’t know what will get you hooked. The more I play with LightSwitch, the more I love it. It is easy to see why there is such a large community behind this technology.
As I have mentioned before, it is the data that drives LightSwitch. The underlying data layer needs to be correct, so a basic understanding of databases is preferable. But the technology is also very forgiving. Give it a few hours time, and you will be quite fluent with it. (more…)
Extending LightSwitch – In my previous post Visual Studio LightSwitch – True Power Lies In Simplicity, I showed how easy and quick it was to create a fully functional, data aware Windows Form. If you haven’t read the previous post, go check it out.
In this post however, I want to take it one step further. They say that no man is an island. Well, I can tell you with confidence that no app is an island either.
Using our previous application as a foundation, let us assume that we wanted to group members together according to some sort of classification. How easy would that be? Let us create another table to group members by their level of study within the organisation. (more…)