Foundation Expression Blend 4 with Silverlight Review

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Foundation Expression Blend 4 with Silverlight ReviewI got this book because I found Expression Blend to be virtually impossible to figure out on my own. I'm a coder not a designer, so I didn't know what the heck I was doing. I think I could figure out what about 25% of the various tools were supposed to do. I needed a book to start with (the online tutorials from Microsoft were nice but too hard to follow) and I needed a book whose author started out assuming that the reader was a complete newby. When I saw that the author of this book had done two previous versions of the book for two previous versions of Blend I was hopeful that this would do the trick. The word "Foundation" in the title suggested strongly that here was a book that very basic. And the upshot of it all was, YES! The book assumes you know very little about the subject and takes you on a hand-held guided tour of the product. Victor Gaudioso makes sure you have an opportunity to work with pretty much every important tool in Blend.
About 50 or 60 pages into it, I got confused about something very important, and wasn't sure what to do about it. I thought I recalled seeing the author's email address in the introductory material, so I checked and yes there it was. I sent an email complaining about what I thought was a problem with the book, or maybe my Blend installation. Assuming that here must be a "famous author" with no time for the common man, I wasn't sure what to expect, but dang if he didn't respond within an hour or so and offer to help me out! He even offered to give me a call to help clear up any misunderstandings I might have. Well, I took him up on it and we had a very pleasant chat about Silverlight, Blend, and so on. I wasn't the only one impressed by this eagerness to assist a reader: when I told my coworkers about it they were amazed, too. And my problem was not the book, or Blend, but me of course.
I recommend this book highly to anyone who needs to learn how to build Silverlight applications in Expression Blend -- especially you design-challenged developers out there!Foundation Expression Blend 4 with Silverlight Overview
Foundation Expression Blend 4 with Silverlight takes you through your first steps in creating rich Internet applications (RIAs) using the latest release of Microsoft's technology. You'll explore features such as custom user controls that you can reuse throughout your projects and the media element that allows you to easily add sound and video to your applications. Silverlight 4 enables you to rapidly develop compelling, cross-platform RIAs using the extensive .NET 4 libraries, the powerful, design friendly Blend 4 integrated development environment (IDE), and an enhanced workflow that allows designers and developers to work on the same set of files at the same time. At the end, you'll put everything you have learned together to create a sample Silverlight 4 website.

Whether you're an experienced .NET or web developer, or you're just starting out, this book will provide you with all you need to create RIAs with Expression Blend 4.

Develop stunning RIAs in a short time using Blend 4 and Silverlight 4.
Learn basic object-oriented programming principles.
Get familiar with the Blend 4 development environment.

What you'll learn
Learn the Blend 4 and Visual Studio 2010 IDEs.
Learn how to create stunning animations using Silverlight 4 Storyboards and incorporate video and sound into your RIAs with the Silverlight MediaElement.
Learn how to develop quickly and efficiently using Silverlight 4's reusable resources such as UserControls, ControlTemplates and DataTemplates.
Learn about the Visual State Manager and the State panel in Blend 4 to easily add MouseEnter and MouseLeave states to your UserControls.
Put everything you have learned together to create a sample Silverlight 4 website.

Who this book is for
Web designers and developers wanting to learn Expression Blend 4 from the ground up. Those who have a background in the development of RIAs and want to learn this new technology.

Table of Contents
Setting Up the Silverlight Development Environment
The Blend Integrated Development Environment
C#, XAML, and Object-Oriented Programming
Layout Controls: Including the New Silverlight 4 Controls: Viewbox, RichTextBox, FlowDirection Property, and Improved Data Binding
Timed Storyboards: Creating a Newton Cradle Application
Using VSM and Blend 4's State Panel to Create a Silverlight Media Player
Behaviors in Silverlight
The Silverlight MediaElement: Create a Video Player with a Custom UserControl, XML De-serialization, and Behaviors
Events and EventHandlers
Classes and Interfaces
Styles, Control Templates, and Custom UserControls
Writing a Custom Content Panel
Writing a Silverlight 4 Out-Of-Browser Application with Elevated Trust and the New Silverlight 4 COM API
Creating a Photobooth Application with the Silverlight 4 Webcam API
MVVM: Model-View-ViewModel
SketchFlow Prototyping
New Features of Silverlight 4


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