Jul
16
Written by:
Michael Washington
7/16/2013 9:46 PM
Xpert360 has recently released AIDE for LightSwitch, a Visual Studio extension that advances the LightSwitch design experience. It has the following features:
- Clone Screen
- Ever wanted to copy a LightSwitch screen? AIDE provides a simple copy screen process. No more starting over on each screen in your project.
- LightSwitch Explorer
- Examine your screen, entity, project and solution metadata in a single window. Navigate to project items to open the file, screen or entity in the design window. Export the data to the clipboard for further analysis in Excel or paste into Word for documenting your application.
- Screen Workbench
- All your screens available in one location. Compare the properties of your screen items side-by-side and launch screen designer and code view (no more switching projects to file view).
Create copies of screens as backups or simply to clone designs. View screen dependencies and navigate to designers with a simple double click.
Exploring The Tool
To explore the tool, we will use the ComponentOne Studio for LightSwitch HTML sample that can be obtained at this link:
http://lsdemo.componentone.com/studio/htmlclient/
You can follow the directions at the following link:
http://support.xpert360.com/entries/24370103-Quick-start-AIDE-for-LightSwitch
to get AIDE for LightSwitch up and running.
After AIDE for LightSwitch is set-up, you access it by selecting View from the tool bar, then Other Windows.
At the time of this writing the LightSwitch Explorer and LightSwitch Screen Workbench are the only components, however the LightSwitch Entity Workbench is due to be released soon and will be covered here.
LightSwitch Explorer
The LightSwitch Explorer provides access to all parts of the application.
For example, selecting Entity Properties allows us to easily see our data model and all the properties.
What is especially helpful is that we can double click on an item to navigate to it in the LightSwitch project.
LightSwitch Screen Workbench
The LightSwitch Screen Workbench allows us to see all the details of the screens.
We can copy a screen by clicking the Clone Screen button.
We will be asked to reload the .lsml files.
We will then have to reload the project (you may have to move any floating windows out of the way first to see the button).
The copy of the screen will be created.
LightSwitch Entity Workbench
There is also the soon to be released enhancement, Entity Workbench that allows you to see all aspects of your tables and related objects.
As with all the screens, you can copy the information…
…and paste it in any program such as Excel.
A Special Offer
Xpert360 is offering a limited time only, 50% discount on AIDE for LightSwitch only to LightSwitchHelpWebsite.com members. You can find more on the promotion at the following link:
http://xpert360.com/products/lightning_aide_promo1.aspx
(if the page is no longer there, the promotion has ended, you can order the tool here: http://xpert360.com/products/lightning_aide.aspx)