The Data Grid that is built-into LightSwitch is quite advanced. You will not really appreciate it until you attempt to duplicate its functionality manually. However, you may be faced with situations that require you to implement a Data Grid from scratch. This will allow you maximum flexibility in your application…

A strong point about ComponentOne is their ability to make great Silverlight controls that aggregate data. The LightSwitch Help Website previously covered their LightSwitch extension: Using OLAP for LightSwitch. That control is designed to be mostly configured by end-users. The article: The LightSwitch Control Extension Makers Dilemma...

It is important to know that you should only use the methods described here as a last resort. The methods described here should not be your first choice for implementing a custom Silverlight Control in LightSwitch. 99% of the time these other methods will work:

Creating A LightSwitch Custom Silverlight Control This Is How LightSwitch Does MVVM...

When you write code in the LightSwitch client layer, you have programmatic access to most of the application. This also applies when you use Silverlight Custom Controls. This is important because it saves you from writing a lot of code. A professional developer can be far more productive when creating a LightSwitch application than when they are coding a Silverlight application without using LightSwitch.

You have the option of Running a LightSwitch Application With A Blank Shell....

Hierarchical data is usually used to display data in a tree. The data typically is in a single table that is self-referencing, meaning it has one property that points to other records in the same table. This is how it is able to track the parent-child relationship between records. A Tree Control is usually used to visualize hierarchical data.

Karol Zadora-Przylecki (Microsoft) created an example, and included important code required by LightSwitch when using a Silverlight Tree Control. You can see the original post here: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/lsextensibility/thread/bcdaa86f-459a-47d3-853a-3c5e56eb088a. In this article, we will follow the concepts outlined by that post.

Note: If you are new to LightSwitch, it is suggested that you start here: Online Ordering System (An End-To-End LightSwitch Example)

Note: You must have Visual Studio Professional (or higher) to complete this tutorial

Telerik has a differentiating LightSwitch control in their Rich Text Editor Control. It allows you to create compelling LightSwitch applications. It allows your end-users to create, import and export Microsoft Word documents. It also contains many other features.

In this example, we will build a small application that allows rich notes to be entered for people.

First, Install the Telerik controls...

It is easy to create a LightSwitch application using your own custom user interface (UI), composed entirely of Silverlight Custom Controls. The article This Is How LightSwitch Does MVVM, covers the basics of how you bind Silverlight Custom Controls to LightSwitch Properties and Collections. The article at this link,...

 

Note: There is a third method covered at this link.

It is easy to create a LightSwitch application using your own custom user interface (UI), composed entirely of Silverlight Custom Controls. The article This Is How LightSwitch Does MVVM,...

This article, Silverlight View Model Style: An (Overly) Simplified Explanation, explains what MVVM is. Basically:

Model – The Data View Model – Collections, Properties, and Commands View – The UI (User Interface) This article, covers some of the problems in implementing MVVM, mostly that is is verbose,  time-consuming, and difficult for many developers to understand and implement. That is not to say that MVVM is not a superior pattern once you have mastered it, but using a tool such as LightSwitch greatly eases it’s use.



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