Michael Washington (ADefWebserver)

Creating a Hello World on Your Amazon Kindle Fire

webmaster@openlightgroup.net — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 05:46:36 GMT

When I received my Amazon Kindle Fire for Christmas I immediately wanted to make programs for it. I am a Microsoft stack programmer and creating Android programs in Java using Eclipse is new to me…

Oh, And It's Also All About Productivity

webmaster@openlightgroup.net — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 05:31:00 GMT

If you stop and think about it, an automobile is an amazing thing. The automobile brings together several key elements such as cost, fuel, rubber tires. The result was a massive increase in productivity for the world...

Trying To Put A Horseshoe On A Car

webmaster@openlightgroup.net — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 03:44:12 GMT

I got a comment on a Blog I wrote on the LightSwitchHelpWebsite.com:

I found it much easier to write application in Visual Studio 2008 than Visual Studio LightSwitch. In LightSwitch, It is has to find any form objects, like button, radio buttons, check boxes, etc. Besides, I could not find any component that I can drop on the screen. Anyway, it seems like a pain to me. Maybe I need a better book. I will still keep taking a shot at LightSwitch until I get it...

Trust me, this is crazy talk .

But, the odd thing is that I feel I totally understand where poster is coming from.

Look at a post I made after The First Hour With Lightswitch –BETA-.

I was stumbling around in the dark.

Radio Buttons And LightSwitch

The poster had a point about the radio buttons. First, yes you can use radio buttons with LightSwitch, see this tutorial: LightSwitch Student Information System (Part 3): Custom Controls.

The problem is that people think you NEED radio buttons to preform certain actions (“so why is it not automatically built-in!”), you don’t (you can simply use drop down combo boxes). The first version of LightSwitch contains the things you MUST have… and then they gave us a huge “this will fix anything” option with Custom Controls.

Get Some Help

I believe the answer is to accept that LightSwitch really is dramatically new and different. If it was just like all the other development tools, then it would not be able to offer anything better than what we have always had available.

We must admit that there is no way to know how to drive a car when all you have ever done is ride a horse.

Admit that you will need some help. Get a book, or go through a beginner tutorial like:

Online Ordering System (An End-To-End LightSwitch Example).

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LightSwitch: It Is About The Money (It Is Always About The Money)

webmaster@openlightgroup.net — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 23:38:00 GMT

But First, The JavaScript

I just looked at the latest JQuery release notes and noted the issues that they had to fix due to web browser compatibility issues. We simply must believe that these people are at the top of their game. If they have this many issues to deal with, aren’t I crazy if I even think of writing any JavaScript without using JQuery?

The rule I follow is, keep the JavaScript to a minimum, and always use JQuery or some other big JavaScript library. The reason is web browser “incompatibilities” and it is very costly and is an issue that is not changing any time soon.

IT is fueled on the money it saves for businesses with the Line Of Business (LOB) applications that we programmers create. However, lately, IT and the programmers creating the LOB apps, cost too much money. The reason, the JavaScript.

JavaScript wasn’t so costly back when we used it to validate date fields and we only had to worry about IE 4 and Netscape 4. However, now it is used for pop up calendars, type ahead searches boxes, hiding and disabling buttons, and creating popups.

With the advent of HTML5, the future promises yet more JavaScript.

JavaScript is not the most economical choice for LOB apps. The reason? It takes a lot of time to create and debug, this costs a lot of money. However, “cost” is relative. Something only “cost too much” when there is an alternative that is cheaper. Well that alternative has arrived with LightSwitch. Our “customers” do not want to pay more money… if given an option, they won’t pay more money, period.

The “Reach” Argument

If you need “reach” you need to use HTML… My focus here is on LOB apps. A single LightSwitch developer can produce as much as 5 HTML/HTML5 developers and complete the project in half the time with 90% less bugs and 100% web browser compatibility (on the web browsers that can run Silverlight 4).

The deciding factor will be the JavaScript. The majority of time the HTML/HTML5 programmers will spend coding and mostly debugging will be the JavaScript. Plus that is assuming that they are using JQuery which is saving them a ton of time.

The advantage HTML has over LightSwitch is “reach”. HTML runs on more devices. It will run on an IPad. If your application needs to run on an IPad then don’t use LightSwitch. However, if it doesn’t, and you don’t need “reach”, why are you spending the extra money?

Do you really think companies will pay $10,000 for a application that will manage their inventory when they can get an application that will do the same thing for $2,000 ?

What about quality? LightSwitch requires you to write less code so you have less bugs. To the end-user that is higher quality. Also, just because a company spends a lot of money, that does not mean that It doesn’t mean that the project wont be a failure.

Yes, LightSwitch Can Handle It

The perception problem that LightSwitch has had, is that people thought it was only good for “simple” apps. Over the past year, many of us on the LightSwitch Help Website have proven that LightSwitch is suitable for your biggest enterprise applications.

I will give a presentation at Visual Studio Live in Orlando this December titled “Unleash The Power: Implementing Custom Shells, Silverlight Custom Controls and WCF RIA Services in LightSwitch”.

In the presentation, I will show the techniques used to create professional quality applications using LightSwitch in a fraction of the time to do a comparable application using HTML. Primarily this is achieved using Silverlight Custom Controls and WCF RIA Services.

After the presentation, I plan to make the code available (in late December) in the LightSwitch Star Contest:

It is about the money, It is always been about the money, and it always will be about the money

My point is that the cost for LOB applications must and will come down. The technology to do that is here in LightSwitch.

I don’t see it as a negative thing. When resources are directed toward programmers, they are taken from somewhere else. Your customers will demand that you reduce costs for IT projects dramatically if the company across the street has reduced its costs dramatically.

Yes HTML5 is cool, but your customers don’t care. They want a satisfactory solution to their needs at the most economical (cheapest) cost…. period.

I have been programming .Net/JavaScript applications for over a decade and I know how much it costs to create an application. The cost is in direct relation to how much time it takes to construct the application. A programmer only has so much time in their life and they want to sell their precious working hours to the highest bidder.

When the time to create an application is reduced, the cost is reduced.

With LightSwitch, you can reduce the time required to create an application by 80%+ and therefore reduce the cost of a $10,000 project to less than $3,000. It’s not magic, just a reduction in time required to perform the same actions. Look at the descriptions of the time it took to create some of the applications in the LightSwitch Star Contest.

When given a choice, your customers will only spend $10,000 if they have to. They will do the math and realize that the deployment of IPads to the warehouse for mobile inventory is not such a great idea after all if the inventory app is going to cost $10k (100 hours @ $100 an hour). For $2k (20 hours @ $100 an hour) you can create an inventory application in LightSwitch and run it on an EXOPC Slate:

People Will Do The Math

It will not be possible to keep this a secret. People will do the math, they always do the math .

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LightSwitch: "There is a commitment to explore creation of apps other than Silverlight..."

webmaster@openlightgroup.net — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 00:20:00 GMT

Here is where I am at on the Silverlight is dead thing...

webmaster@openlightgroup.net — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 13:28:00 GMT

We finally know what is going on with Windows 8 and that while there is XAML + C#, there is no Silverlight as we know it except in ‘Legacy mode’...

Let's Do A LightSwitch Hack-A-Thon

webmaster@openlightgroup.net — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 22:09:00 GMT

Most Hack-A-Thons are a grind because to give the contestants time to come up with something decent you need to give them at least a day.

Not so with LightSwitch. One of the selling points of LightSwitch is that development is so fast. With LightSwitch you can give contestants only 1 hour...

Beth Massi presents on LightSwitch

webmaster@openlightgroup.net — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 06:00:14 GMT

Beth Massi spoke at the Los Angeles Silverlight User's Group about LightSwitch at Blank Spaces in Santa Monica, CA on 8/24/2011. The event was co-sponsored with the LightSwitchHelpWebsite.com.

The room was packed with over 40 people and she did a special deep dive into extending LightSwitch for advanced situations.

Beth also revealed that her team will introduce some exciting new LightSwitch extensions next week.

(Beth Massi and Michael Washington (of LightSwitchHelpWebsite.com))

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Using WCF RIA Services With LightSwitch: I Know You're Scared, I Understand

webmaster@openlightgroup.net — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 01:16:00 GMT

First item of business, you’re not wrong. If your code works, and you are happy with it, march on with my blessing!

This is not about telling anyone that they “are wrong”. It is written only to encourage you to consider using WCF RIA Services in your LightSwitch applications.

The LightSwitch Control Extension Makers Dilemma

webmaster@openlightgroup.net — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 21:06:01 GMT

You know it seems like ComponentOne gets all the breaks. Due to the nature of their control, they were able to take an existing Silverlight control, and create a LightSwitch control, and create what I call the “Killer Application” for LightSwitch, ComponentOne's OLAP for LightSwitch (live demo) (you can get it for $295). Take a look at the walk-thru I did for the control : Using OLAP for LightSwitch.

Compare that to a walk-thru I just did for the Telerik Rich Text Editor control: Using the Telerik Rich Text Editor In Visual Studio LightSwitch. The difference is that it took me a lot longer to explain how to use the Telerik control. This is not really Telerik’s fault. What really happened, is that due to the way LightSwitch is designed, everything went ComponentOne’s way. They got all the upsides and none of the downsides.

The Problem: The Properties

LightSwitch is really a View Model application designer. Yes it has some built-in controls that it dynamically creates, but for real professional work, it simply says “I have the data, you provide the control, and tell me where on the control you want me to bind to”.

This is easy enough, the problem is when you want to set options. Both the Telerik and ComponentOne controls have a ton of options;

however, the ComponentOne OLAP control is designed for the end-user to set the options.

The Telerik control is designed to have the programmer set the options.

With the Telerik Rich Text Editor Control, you have to step out side of the “click, next, click, next” wizard process, and carefully set some properties. With the ComponentOne OLAP Control, you select a table, and then “click, click, F5” and run the working app. NOW you do have to “get your hands dirty” and set a bunch of options, but you are doing it on a working app (besides YOU are not suppose to do it, all this fun is intended for your end-users).

That’s why I gave ComponentOne the “Killer App” title. ANYONE can use their control. Your success rate is 100%. I cannot say the same thing for the Telerik control or ANY control that needs the programmer to set the options rather than the end-user.

Now, don’t get me wrong, your success rate is WAY higher than any other technology I can think of. Definitely higher than if you coded your Silverlight app by hand without using LightSwitch.

If you don’t believe me, take a look at the MVVM forum on the Silverlight.net site. There, many people are having a hard time performing simple tasks, and that group is mostly professional programmers. Take a look at the LightSwitch forums, and the questions are usually related to non-common scenarios. Remember that group is mostly people who are NOT professional programmers.

What Is A Control Vendor To Do?

So what is the answer? As a control vendor you want to make things as easy as possible for your end-users. LightSwitch does allow a control vendor, the ability to provide a custom menu, that will allow the programmer to set properties on the control (see Switch on the Light - Bing Maps and LightSwitch).

You can read the documentation on the API here: Defining, Overriding, and Using LightSwitch Control Properties. However, if you look at the BING maps example, you still get a property page that looks like this:

That box with the red box is around it, is the extent of the customization, the rest of the properties are the default properties.

My point is that Telerik would have a hard time cramming the 1000’s of possible configurations of their Rich Text Editor into a LightSwitch property panel (however, don’t be surprised if they come out with a “light” version of some of their controls in the future).

The Infragistic Solution

Infragistics looks like it is taking the “middle ground”. You can see their controls here: http://labs.infragistics.com/lightswitch/. What they are doing is making their controls available on a granular level.

When the programmer is implementing say, a Slider Control, one instance at a time...

The property page is more manageable, however, they are still really pushing it .

You can see a walk-thru of what their design-time experience is like at these links:

Understanding NetAdvantage for Visual Studio LightSwitch - Dealing with Charts (Part 1)

Understanding NetAdvantage for Visual Studio LightSwitch – Using Range Sliders (Part 2)

Understanding NetAdvantage for Visual Studio LightSwitch – Creating Maps (Part 3)

No Easy Answers… Yet

In the end, we end up with choice. “choice” is an odd thing, you only want it if you need it, otherwise “choice” causes you to have to do too much work… you have to make a choice. It’s not that you don’t want to do the work, it is just that you are always afraid of making the wrong choice, and that is stressful.

Should Telerik simplify their Rich Text Control to allow it to be configured in a LightSwitch property page? Is it even possible?

I think the real answer may come in LightSwitch version 2. I suspect that a future version of LightSwitch will allow control vendors more customization options for their controls. I also suspect that the reason it was not in version one, is that LightSwitch also needs to allow you to create HTML5 controls…

… but, that’s another story .

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