LightSwitch Cosmopolitan Shell and Theme for VS 11 Beta

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NOTE: This information applies to LightSwitch in Visual Studio 11 beta.

Last week the team released the LightSwitch Cosmopolitan Shell and Theme for Visual Studio 11 Beta and there has been a ton of great feedback so far. So this morning I decided to update my Contoso Construction sample application to use it.

This shell displays the application logo at the top right, so I made some minor tweaks to the Home Screen to remove the logo image I had there before. I also updated some of the icons on the screen command bars to make them look a little better with this shell, like adding a transparent background.

Check it out! (click pictures to enlarge) 

Contoso1

Contoso2

Contoso3 

What I really like is the ability to brand the application with your own logo by specifying an image on the general properties of the application. This appears across the top of the main window. If you don’t specify an image then no space is taken up for it.

image

Another thing I really like is the cleaner menu system which takes up a lot less space than the previous “Office” theme. This theme will become the default theme for LightSwitch applications you create with LightSwitch V2 in Visual Studio 11. You’ll still be able to select the office theme, but this one will be the default on new apps.

I’ve updated the sample here:

Download Sample Contoso Construction - LightSwitch Advanced Sample (Visual Studio 11 Beta)

Let us know what you think of the new shell by leaving a comment here or on the LightSwitch team blog post. There are a lot of great comments there already.

Enjoy!