- Introduction
- Targeting .NET 4.5
- New Structure and Solution Explorer Enhancements
- Improved Team Development
- Easier Navigation
- Enhanced Views with Multiple Designers
- HTML Client: JavaScript IntelliSense and DOM Explorer Improvements
- Intrinsic Database Management with Linked Database Projects
- Conclusions
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New Structure and Solution Explorer Enhancements
There are many important changes in how LightSwitch projects are created and structured in Visual Studio 2013. The first important change is that every screen and every table is now represented by a file with the .lsml extension. These files are based on the XML markup language, and they make it easier to give projects a better organization (other than solving conflict problems in team development, as explained later). You should never edit .lsml files manually, since you'll work with designers, so I won't show their content here.
Figure 1 shows .lsml files for both screens and tables in Solution Explorer. It's worth mentioning that this happens in both the HTML client and the Silverlight desktop client.
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Figure 1 Solution Explorer in Visual Studio 2013 for LightSwitch.
Every .lsml file has a code-behind file. For instance, a screen in the Silverlight client can have a Visual Basic or C# code-behind file, whereas in the HTML client .lsml files have JavaScript code-behind files. On the server side, table definition files with the .lsml extension always have VB or C# code-behind files, depending on which programming language you chose when creating the project.
The new project structure also affects Solution Explorer in other areas. Visual Studio 2013 no longer offers Logical view and File view; you simply have the usual classic view of any kind of project you can open in Visual Studio. This change makes the LightSwitch development environment even simpler and provides a more logical approach. You can compare the new view to an extended File view. You also can take advantage of all the best tools offered by Solution Explorer since Visual Studio 2012 (a blog post on MSDN explains the details), such as search, scoping, and duplicate views.