Pro Silverlight 3 in C# (Expert's Voice in Silverlight) Review

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Pro Silverlight 3 in C# (Expert's Voice in Silverlight) ReviewThis book is by far the best resource for Silverlight 3.0. In this version the author added a whopping 185 pages to the last edition. He added chapters on Data Controls, separated the Styles, Templates, and Custom Controls into two separate chapters name Styles and Behaviors, and Templates and Custom Controls, and added a new chapter on Navigation.
I have bought 3 other books on Silverlight 3, and put together they only contain about 1/8 of the value of this book (you can see which ones they are by Googling "Shiny Turds Books that do not Cut the Mustard").
It starts out with an introduction that covers the Visual Studio Silverlight environment. He then gives a short introduction to XAML. The introductions really help those who have no experience get rolling right away.
The author covers every out of the box element in detail (including the DataGrid control and a little on the DataForm control), and includes a nice reference for where the element can be found in the book. He also covers styles and templates, brushes and transforms, shapes and geometries, animation, and layout containers.
The book covers out-of-browser applications, assembly caching, networking, multithreading, isolated storage, browser integration, media and deep zoom, wcf services, the application model, and dependency properties and routed events.
One of the things I like best about the book is it includes a lot of references and material on the Silverlight Toolkit.
The book is very readable for those that like to read cover to cover, but it also makes a great reference.
The downloadable code is very usable and very complete.
This is a must have book for any developer working with Silverlight 3.0.
Pro Silverlight 3 in C# (Expert's Voice in Silverlight) OverviewSilverlight 3 is the latest iteration of Microsoft's cross-browser technology for creating rich user experiences on the web. Like its predecessor, Silverlight 2, it rides atop the .NET Framework for maximum ease of use and coding efficiency. The new technology carries forward much of the work that has been done before and augments it in many important respects, including support for H.264 video, major improvements to the graphics engine (including true 3D rendering) and much richer data-binding options for interfacing with other applications.This second edition of Pro Silverlight in C# carries forward the all the key features that have made the first edition an immediate success. Most notably the book presents all artwork, screenshots and code in full-colour; provides readers with a comprehensive theoretical grounding, and illustrates all concepts with an abundance of fully-worked practical examples.

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Microsoft Expression Blend 4 Unleashed Review

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Microsoft Expression Blend 4 Unleashed ReviewI've read all the Blend books I could find. My summaries would be as follows:
Foundation Expression Blend 4 with Silverlight 4 (Friends of Ed): Poor. Printed in black and white. Author seems totally confused about some topics (especially grid layout and coding) and misleads the reader as a result. Unstructured and rambling.
Blend 4 Step by Step (Microsoft Press): Not a bad set of tutorials but can be frustrating when things don't work as advised. Good intro tutorials but not much else and leaves out too much key information.
Pro Blend 4 (Apress): The second best book available. However after the same author's seminal "Pro C#" book I was disappointed at how thin this book was, and feel it should have been issued under the "Beginning" series instead. It is printed in full colour but suffers from being written by a hard core developer who doesn't seem to have "got" some of the key points or understood what's important about design. Too often there's an excuse that something is "beyond the scope of this book" when really it shouldn't be. However it's well worth reading and makes a nice companion to the "best" book....
which brings me to this one. Blend 4 Unleashed. Why is it the best?
The author seems to have written this book as if it were a classroom course, and fine-tuned it based on student feedback. The examples work, but more importantly he answers questions the other books ignore as they're working through things (eg "Why is the square peg next to a property orange or green or yellow?", "What can I do with the grid just using those funny icons, or moving the mouse close to them?" etc). More importantly where other books just say "Do this" and then give no explanation at all of why something works the way it does, the author here is at pains to explain why results might not be what you would expect them to be. He understands the layout system in the way the other authors don't and is at great pains to get you to understand it too. The book is also printed in full colour and unlike the other books I never once hit an example where the instructions just didn't work. It was tempting to bypass the introductory chapter thinking I knew all I needed to know after reading the other books mentioned above, but the author taught me some new tricks which none of the other books had mentioned. I felt I was in the hands of an expert who'd planned his book out very carefully to try and get me "started right" rather than just "started".
My only two criticisms would be that (1) the proof-reading is rather poor (I know how this happens - the editors tell technical reviewers not to correct typos as they have staff to do that and are only interested in being informed about technical errors, but in-house publishing staff just do a terrible job of proof-reading). Thankfully these proof-reading errors are just annoying spellings, typo's and grammatical errors and there are no problems where it really matters - with the instructions and XAML listings. (2) I would have loved for the book to be twice as long. But these are minor quibbles. If you can only afford one Blend book this is definitely the one to get.Microsoft Expression Blend 4 Unleashed Overview

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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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Foundation Expression Blend 3 with Silverlight (Foundations) Review

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Foundation Expression Blend 3 with Silverlight (Foundations) ReviewThe title of the book should have been: Writing Code-Behind files for Blend 3 in Visual Studio 2008.
The whole point of Blend is to be able to create Silverlight websites using a visual interface. One of the first things this author does is have the reader load up Visual Studio 2008. He even begins projects in VS. He does things in code that can be easily accomplished by just using the visual interface in Blend, he loves his coding.
Blend is part of the Expression suite of products. Yes, you can work on Blend projects in VS. For certain types of projects it is even necessary to do so, but this author takes it to the extreme. If you thumb through the book, it is page after page of code. Had I seen this before I bought it, I would never spent the money on it.
For the record, I am a coder. What I NEED to learn is how to use the visual interface in Blend, not Victor's idea of how to use code-behind in Blend.
People who want to build straight forward websites using a visual interface will be disappointed with all the coding examples used.
Getting tired of me ranting about the coding? I was tired of the coding in the book.
His book barely scratches the surface of what Blend can do on its own, without code-behind, without Visual Studio 2008.
The publisher needs to re-title the book. How about: Using C# to Code in Blend? That wouldn't sell as many books, would it?Foundation Expression Blend 3 with Silverlight (Foundations) OverviewSilverlight is Microsoft's breakthrough technology for creating rich experiences on the web. Expression Blend is the visual environment used for creating these Silverlight applications. This book details everything a designer or developer needs to know to start developing Silverlight web applications in Blend.

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Microsoft Expression Blend 4 Step by Step (Step By Step (Microsoft)) Review

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Microsoft Expression Blend 4 Step by Step (Step By Step (Microsoft)) ReviewWhen learning doesn't feel like a job, it's much easier to embrace. "Step by Step: Microsoft Expression Blend 4" is a guide to learning how to use the Microsoft Silverlight programming tool Expression Blend to create the application with the features they desire. Broke down in an easy to follow and learn style, authors Elena Koskinska & Chris Leeds seek to present a comprehensive instructional manual to use Expression to the fullest, with tips on side programming as well. "Step by Step" is a complete and comprehensive resource for anyone looking to get the most out of Expression Blend and Silverlight, a must have reference.
Microsoft Expression Blend 4 Step by Step (Step By Step (Microsoft)) Overview
The smart way to learn Microsoft® Expression Blend® 4—one step at a time!

Experience learning made easy—and quickly teach yourself how to design rich user interfaces (UI) for Microsoft Silverlight®-based applications using Expression Blend 4. With Step by Step, you set the pace—building and practicing the skills you need, just when you need them!

Master the Expression Blend 4 core tools and features
Use SketchFlow to design a UI prototype
Create reusable skins for Silverlight 4 controls
Implement interactive elements without writing code
Add XAML and C# basics to your design skill set
Design custom UI art with tools in Expression® Design 4

Your Step by Step digital content includes:

All the book's practice files—ready to download and put to work.
Fully searchable online edition of this book—with unlimited access on the Web.

The print version of this book includes free digital content online. To download, please visit O'Reilly's web site, search for the title of this book to find its catalog page, and click on the link below the cover image (Examples, Companion Content, or Practice Files). Note that while we provide as much of the media content as we are able via free download, we are sometimes limited by licensing restrictions. Please direct any questions or concerns to booktech@oreilly.com.


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