Capitalizing on the launch of Visual Studio LightSwitch this week,.NET UI development tool vendorInfragistics released NetAdvantage for Visual Studio LightSwitch, a set of Silverlight-based LightSwitch extensions. The extensions comprise NetAdvantage UI tools, shells, and themes that LightSwitch users can use in building and sharing business applications on the desktop, browser, and the cloud. Infragistics also released a free version of the product, NetAdvantage for Visual Studio LightSwitch Light.
Infragistics sees its NetAdvantage for Visual Studio LightSwitch offering meeting a market need by providing extensions to a product geared toward both end-user and professional developers of business applications. "LightSwitch is sitting in the sweet spot between Visual Studio and Access—which has a long history of helping business end-user developers build applications," said Jason Beres, vice president of product management at Infragistics. "There's just a whole slew of Access-like apps out there built by people who have the ability to write a little bit of code. We looked at the gaps where Microsoft isn't investing and married that with customer demand for richer data visualization charts in the XAML platforms. We took our XAML controls and integrated them into LightSwitch controls, using our extensibility model."
NetAdvantage for Visual Studio LightSwitch includes three data-visualization controls, Data Chart, Gauge, and Bullet Graph; editing controls such as Slider, Mask, and Numeric Editor; and a Map control that lets users work with geospatial and thematic mapping scenarios. The product also includes the Outlook Bar/Tileview Shell Extension, a custom shell extension that gives a tiled, "Windows 8-like" appearance to the computer display. Four themes round out the NetAdvantage for Visual Studio LightSwitch features: the Infragistics IG Theme, Orange (an orange-gray scheme), Metro (a minimalistic theme resembling Windows Phone 7's Metro UI) and Office 2010 Blue.
Infragistics NetAdvantage for Visual Studio LightSwitch Gauge control
NetAdvantage for Visual Studio LightSwitch is being offered at an introductory price of $195 and $695 with priority support. The regular price for the product, once the introductory offer expires, is $395 and $895 with priority support. Customers who subscribe to NetAdvantage Ultimate will automatically receive NetAdvantage for Visual Studio LightSwitch. You can find more information or download a trial version of NetAdvantage for Visual Studio LightSwitch here.