Foundation Expression Blend 2: Building Applications in WPF and Silverlight [Paperback]

Victor Gaudioso (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1590599764 | ISBN-13: 978-1590599761 | Publication Date: March 28, 2008 | Edition: 1st ed. 2008. Corr. 2nd printing

Expression Blend was Microsoft’s first entry into the web application and design space; the first time they trod on Adobe Flash’s toes. They got a lot of things right, and started to carve out a market, but they didn’t get the crossover numbers they wanted. Blend 2 is where they put that right. This book details everything a designer or developer needs to know to start developing web applications in Blend.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Victor Gaudioso is a senior applications engineer for REZN8 Productions, Inc. in Hollywood, CA. Victor was a former Flash/ActionScript Engineer for an advertising agency and worked on sites for large entertainment companies such as Disney, Universal, Mattel and Warner Bros. Victor still writes tutorials and articles on Flash development for actionscript.org where he is a moderator. Currently Victor is developing WPF/Blend and Silverlight applications for clients such as Harra's and Electric Red.

Product Details

• Paperback: 376 pages
• Publisher: Apress; 1st ed. 2008. Corr. 2nd printing edition (March 28, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590599764
• ISBN-13: 978-1590599761
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 7.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #943,471 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Victor Gaudioso is an independent Windows Presentation Foundation and Silverlight developer. Victor has worked on some of the most cutting-edge WPF and Silverlight applications that have been developed to date, including the Surface Winebar CES demo and Surface Air Hockey with simulated physics, which debuted at PDC in 2008. Victor was also part of the team that launched the Silverlight Entertainment Tonight Emmy minisite, one of the very first Silverlight applications to market, which made live streaming video directly from the red carpet available to the site's visitors. In his spare time, Victor continues to write books under the friends of ED flagship Foundation series in hopes of presenting the powerful new Microsoft technologies of WPF and Silverlight to developers around the globe. It would appear that he is succeeding, as his first book is required reading in most courses on interactive web media development, and is available in university libraries around the world--from Germany to the Philippines to the United States. Along with development and writing books, Victor reaches out to the community, for which he teaches a course on WPF and Silverlight at Almer/Blank's Rich Media Institute in Venice, CA. Victor is also active in the Flash community and often makes appearances at Flash events such as Flash in the Can (FiTC) and Flashapalooza.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best book for designers by far, October 29, 2008

By 

Erik R. Gloor "The Pixel Pilot" (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Foundation Expression Blend 2: Building Applications in WPF and Silverlight (Paperback)

As a designer who'd previously been using Photoshop, Flash and Dreamweaver for the past 10 years to lay out Web pages, orienting myself to the Silverlight/Blend paradigm was a challenge. Xbaps, Xaps, C#, Visual Studio and serious development are all enough to scare the frozen latte out of the average designer with my credentials. But boredom, a zest for the next cutting edge technology, and a desire to expand my portfolio of skills landed me squarely in the midst of this challenge and I'm here to tell you Mr. Gaudioso's book is the one you want if you're a designer like myself.

With exceptionally patient and generous writing, Gaudioso takes the designer into the world of serious development and stays with you throughout. He does so by introducing you step by step to this unique new application designed for the very purpose of bringing designers and developers together to create the Web applications of the future. He doesn't sugar-coat anything, Blend is a serious tool meant to be used with other serious development tools like Visual Studio. But he's able to step into the mind of the uninitiated and walk you through setting up your development environment in easy-to-understand ways.

I especially appreciated those instances in which he analogizes Web paradigms to explain WPF design constructs, comparing, for example, resource files to CSS and certain layout elements to HTML tables.

If you're a designer interested in getting your arms around WPF, Silverlight and Expression Blend, Gaudioso's book ought to be the first book you buy.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Helps you get started in understanding how to develop in Silverlight., June 5, 2008

By 

Daniel R. Gleason "DanSoCalMan" (Irvine, CA and points West) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Foundation Expression Blend 2: Building Applications in WPF and Silverlight (Paperback)

I bought this book soon after MS released the Beta 1 of Silverlight 2.
It helped me get started with learning the Expression Blend tool and how to do some basic design. It is not a programmers book nor does it attempt to be one. It is a good introduction on how to get around in Blend so you don't have to figure it out yourself. And along the way the authour makes it enjoyable.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Greatly Improved my Understanding, October 31, 2008

By 

LJ Tenison (Portland, OR) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Foundation Expression Blend 2: Building Applications in WPF and Silverlight (Paperback)

This book was great for me. I am an old-style coder/programmer who hasn't done much actual coding for a long time. I recently ran across some stunning product simulations written using Expression Blend, so I installed a copy and tried to figure it out. I didn't have a clue! So, I looked around and found this book, bought it, and went through the examples. What a revelation! I finally understand why Microsoft wanted to "blend" the content designer and the developer worlds w/ this product. Not only that, but this book also gave me more insight into how Visual Studio can work on the SAME code set that Blend is using. Great technique for collaboration. The book is well-paced, well-written and full of useful examples. Downloads of more complex examples are available, if you want to save some time. The author did a great job adding clarity to what can be a complicated development domain.