Multiple HTML Clients for Modular LightSwitch Development

LightSwitch Research and Experimentation

Lots and lots of this going on at the moment, especially since the Visual Studio 2012 Update 2 release that includes the LightSwitch Mobile HTML client functionality.

LightSwitch Next Version Two Gossip Tidbits

#1 Live from VSLive 14th May 2013 – Q and A with Microsoft’s Jay Schmelzer, director of program management for Visual Studio at Microsoft.

Q: So do you expect more hands to go up next time you ask a Visual Studio Live! crowd about their awareness of LightSwitch?

JS: “I definitely do. I think we’ve got a number of things coming out that we aren’t ready to talk about yet, but probably in the BUILD time [June 2013], that will get some folks more excited and really understand where we are going with this. I’m hoping next year we come back and I see at least 50 percent of the hands in the air. I think the question for next year will actually be how many people are using it, and we will see probably 50 percent of this kind of audience saying they are using it for something.”  [50% of VS users using LightSwitch by 2014!]

#2 LightSwitch Forum 20^th May 2013 – Beth Massi: We also know that it’s painful for team development and so we are working on making that much easier in the next release — stay tuned for more info.

So there is more to come and we will be hearing about it real soon…

Multi-Client Sample – Vote for it in UserVoice!

Recipe: 1 x Silverlight client, 3 x HTML clients in 1 x LightSwitch project.

Q: Does it work?

A: Yes in designer, build and runtime.

Q: Can I have multiple Silverlight clients?

A: Yes, though not fully working. The designer throws errors because of the implementation of the singular client properties and navigation structure associated with the Silverlight client. But with caution it builds and runs with multiple Silverlight clients too.

OK, I want to download a code sample as I am not convinced…

Then head over to the Visual Studio Gallery as we have uploaded a sample for ‘experimental’ purpose:

Experiment with Multiple HTML Clients in LightSwitch

“This sample demonstrates how to bypass the problem of the LightSwitch V3 designer only allowing a maximum of two clients in a project: 1 x SilverLight, 1 x HTML. The LightSwitch V3 designer works with multiple HTML clients in one project though it is not officially supported. It is one of the UserVoice requests for the next version. This sample shows how to experiment with multiple HTML clients now to add an extra option to investigating modular LightSwitch development.”

Conclusion

One small step on the road to modular development of large projects using Visual Studio LightSwitch.

For more information just go see the LightSwitch HTML client articles and posts here:

• Beth Massi Blog – sharing the goodness – [open in new window]
• Visual Studio LightSwitch Team Blog – [open in new windows]
• Deep Linking … – DotNetLore – [open in new window]
• Forum: Modular development … – [open in window]
• Forum: What can you do with LS … – [open in new window]