Creating Web Pages Using the LightSwitch HTML Client in Visual Studio 2012
My friend and fellow MVP Michael Washington runs THE LightSwitch website, and recently he published a book, Creating Web Pages Using the LightSwitch HTML Client in Visual Studio 2012, and I decided to buy a physical copy to show my appreciation of his great work. I thought I would take some time to write a brief review of the book.
The question I always ask for a review is: Is this the book for me? The answer is YES! This book is for everyone! However, let’s dig into some more details on the book.
Newbies to LightSwitch
If you are new to LightSwitch—or new to the HTML client—then the book covers a lot of what you need to think about. Each chapter covers in a very practical way how to implement what it’s showing, and it is very visual in how it covers the material. What’s great is that this book doesn’t shy away from the developer aspects, and there is plenty of coverage on JavaScript development models and how to put them together.
This is so good for newbies that I think Michael should license it to Microsoft so they can build training material around it!
LightSwitch Professionals
I have done LightSwitch for years—from the smallest projects to massive things and everything in between—and even I saw and learned things. A lot of what I personally gained was ideas on how to structure content and insights on JavaScript libraries. I literally went to work the next day after reading the book and submitted a list of ideas inspired by it!
Where the Book Is Weak
The book isn’t perfect, though—where it falls short is in the later sections, most glaringly a section on using a WCF RIA Service with it. RIA Services, with the zombie-ness of Silverlight (in my view), and since LightSwitch does support WebAPI—which ASP.NET is pushing and is the future (in my view)—there is no Web API material.
The only other issue is that the images are in grayscale. While reading it didn’t annoy me, but when I closed it and realized the final example image is the one on the cover, I realized how much I missed not having color images.