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

Victor Gaudioso (Author)

Book Description

The only real tool available for creating rich media applications, web-based animations, and games has been Flash—until now! WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) and Silverlight have opened the door of rich media application development to Microsoft .NET developers. With Microsoft's Blend 2 and Visual Studio 2008, you can now create compelling rich media applications, complete with animations and even 3D!

This book shows you how to take full advantage of Blend's interface, together with and Silverlight's vastly improved designer-developer workflow, guiding you through every step of development from downloading and installing of the development environment through creating finished, functional projects. You'll learn how to create simple drawing applications with the InkCanvas, make tabbed and scrollable interfaces, as well as build fully featured media players, photo galleries, and interactive 3D designs.

Each chapter discusses major WPF and Silverlight features, provides a hands-on tutorial, and explains how that feature is implemented in the real world. In the end, you will have a collection of impressive WPF and Silverlight applications that can be added to your portfolio.

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 rich media applications with Expression Blend 2.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Victor Gaudioso is a senior application engineer at IdentityMine, a top-tier software company specializing in designing and developing cutting edge software applications, creating customized WPF/Blend and Silverlight training programs and creating tools for designers and developers. Victor has worked with Fortune 500 companies such as Microsoft, Harrah's, Mattel, NBC/Universal, Disney, Best Buy, GameStop, Vivendi Universal Games, and New Line Cinema, among others. Victor, a former Flash/ActionScript engineer, still stays active in the Flash community by writing articles and tutorials on ActionScript.org, where he is also a moderator.

Product Details

• File Size: 7304 KB
• Print Length: 374 pages
• Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1590599764
• Publisher: friendsofED; 1 edition (March 28, 2008)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B001C34DHU
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Not Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #996,323 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

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

Format: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

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

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

Format: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.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Exactly what I needed... October 15, 2008

By S. Nagel

Format:Paperback

This book is great for someone looking to get started in Expression Blend. There are a lot of tips and tricks and it really helps you navigate through the tool easily. I particularly liked that the author pointed out who the book is for and what you need to know before getting started. Also, it is a fun read and filled with real world examples! I look forward to the more advanced book that I am sure is in the works.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars That's what I needed. September 29, 2008

By Georgiy Dubinin

Format:Paperback

This book is a very good tutorial for beginners. Easy to follow step by step directions really make learning experience painless.

4.0 out of 5 stars Great starter book December 3, 2009

By Anil Shankar

Format:Paperback

As the author promises at the beginning of the book, you need to know very little of C# (the brush-up chapter in the book does a good job) and nothing about WPF/Silverlight/Expression Blend to stitch up a few simple interfaces. Diligently working through the examples will give you a good grasp of the fundamental techniques. I found the book to be very helpful - the writing style is clear, the steps are illustrated well - and overall, the book makes learning Expression Blend fun. Highly recommended. I only give it 4/5 stars mainly because there were no advanced projects explored.

5.0 out of 5 stars Good book to get a solid foothold in Blend/Silverlight May 6, 2009

By John F. Cardwell

Format:Paperback

In a nutshell, Mr. Gaudioso's aproach is super positive and thorough. I have had almost no trouble with the examples and I feel the examples will give me good tools for a solid foundation in WPF/Silverlight design and development.

I have been avoiding Silverlight since it first was released in Beta and I couldn't get it to work or make anything in it. Frustrating. I was hoping Silverlight would go away, but it hasn't. My boss gave me the "Friends of Ed" book and I was very skeptical, for I'm a religious-nutjob fan of the O'Reilly books. Surprisingly, I found myself whizzing through the book and actually liking Blend.

I have been using Adobe products for about ten years as a designer and I have been a Flash actionscripter for over two years. I thought I would never use Blend again, but this book has gotten me excited. C# and the dot.NET framework are so powerful and snappy. Visual Studio 2008 is nothing to be shy about. I like it a lot better than using the CS4 code editor. VS2008 practically writes your code for you.

I would definitely recommend this book for anyone wanting to learn Blend WPF/Silverlight. You will have the tools you need to get going and confident in Blend in less than a week.

John Cardwell,
Seattle, WA

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.