Customer Reviews

Foundation Expression Blend 3 with Silverlight (Foundations)

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

The 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?

I found this book to be a very good introduction to learning Expression Blend 3. I am no longer intimidated by the Blend interface, which is much more than I can say about many of my peers! (I am a software engineer and have been developing with .NET since it's first beta release in 2001, but have never been very good at user design/experience.) This book has given me the confidence to build new applications without the drab, gray, boxy-look of traditional Windows applications. I loved the hands-on approach to learning that this book offers so you aren't spending all of your time reading about every property that every control has - instead, you are using them and seeing how they work in a live application. The book was easy to read and easy to follow.

I have also had some discussions with the author, Victor Gaudioso, who I found to be very responsive to my questions. He has added me to his email update list so that I get notified of new, instructional videos that he puts together for Blend 3, which I have found quite helpful.

With that being said, here are the things I would have liked to seen changed or added:

1. I did not like the fact that all of the pictures were black/gray/white. Many of the gradient effects for buttons and such were hard to distinguish when printed this way. I know that printing in color significantly increases the cost of printing, but maybe there could be a way to see the color images online so we can compare what they truly look like to what we are doing in our own design.

2. I think the MVVM example/discussion should have come at the end of the book, or maybe as an Appendix. It is a much more advanced topic than the ones leading up to it and it takes quite a bit of studying, even for a developer since I have no experience in MVP or MVVM, in order to digest it. It seemed out of place where it was.

3. I also would have liked to seen some examples using/explaining Behaviors in comparison with Event Handlers so that we could compare the 2 approaches to designing applications. If there is true separation between the designer and the developer, the designer would be more likely to use Behaviors to implement their effects than Event Handlers.

4. I also agree with another reviewer that there could have been more on using timed animations in an application using the timeline. While there was more than adequate coverage on using the Visual State Manager, there wasn't much on true animation sequences. Victor did create a couple of new videos in response to this request, which have helped.

So overall, it did fill its promise as a "foundation" book. It is one of the best "How to get started in Blend 3" books that I have seen thus far. Now I need to find a book for "the next level" in Blend. Something beyond the "foundations"...

As an officer in the Roanoke Valley .Net Users Group, I have seen several presentations on Silverlight over the past several months. My interest in Silverlight was very strong. However, every time I sat down to experiment with Silverlight & Blend I never got past square one. Last month, I Came across Foundation Expression Blend 3 with Silverlight by Victor Gaudioso and immediately bought the book. Within minutes, I had working examples from the book up and running. This book is great for getting started and understanding the big picture. There is a considerable learning curve to understanding the Blend and Visual Studio integration. Victor's book explains this integration and so much more. If you accurately follow Victor's examples, you will learn many valuable Silverlight development fundamentals. By learning these essential concepts I am on my way to building more robust Web and WPF applications.

So far the book is great at explaining the core features of Blend. It starts with a good overview of the layout controls which is crucial to Silverlight development.

I was kind of thrown back when I got to chapter 5 on Storyboards. I am a programmer/designer and I stick primarily with Visual Basic. I am also in the legal field, so the verbose and plain language syntax of Visual Basic suits me better than C#.

Anyhow, all of the code samples in the book are in C#. If you are a VB programmer, you will definitely need to consult other resources to get the code to work correctly. For instance, in order to wire-up effects via the Visual State Manager you will have to use delegates in Visual Basic. Most developers do not work with delegates on a daily basis, but it is crucial for Silverlight development. I'm not sure if C# uses delegates because it all looks like a bunch of gibberish to me. Not my cup of tea.

In conclusion, the author is great, but the book should have included VB samples. Contrary to popular belief, Visual Basic can do everything that C# can do. To make matters more complicated, both of these .net languages can do everything that XAML can do! Great stuff.

Immediately after watching Victor Gaudioso's tutorial on SketchFlow Prototyping in Blend at his website, I knew I needed to buy this book to get me going in Expression Blend. I'm a bit of a how-to book collector, not always delving into actual "doing" but that wasn't the case here. I was so inspired by Mr. Gaudioso's projects and down-to-earth explanations, that I dove right into Blend. Highly recommended for anyone just getting started.

I really enjoyed the flow of the exercises, and the practical applications of Silverlight and Blend are apparent while reading, without years of programming know-how. Mr. Gaudioso explains concepts in a way that became immediately clear to this designer, without making me feel intimidated by the code.

...and there *is* code, but I found myself looking forward to trying out each chapter as I went along. I feel comfortable with the idea of learning more as I expand my horizons from mere designer to more competent designer/developer. "Foundation" is exactly what I gained from my experience with this book.

As a developer, I have always been intimidated by anything related to graphics. I was forced to learn WPF and Blend because of a new project being developed with these tools. I was amazed at the lack of books on the subject, but pleasantly surprised with this book. While I have developed for several years, many of the books I use do a very bad job of really giving you the subject matter in an easily digested format. This book does an excellent job of giving you the design side of blend and also the technical side of applying it. We are having a large firm develop the initial project and in a recent presentation to show the screens, I realized that the buttons in the demo had the identical colors and design taken directly from this book.
As a rule, I do not write reviews of books, but this one has been too good at giving me a solid understanding of the subject matter and really living up to the actual premise of the book: bridging my very meager understanding of Blend and the concept of graphical design. I highly recommend this book to anyone thinking of designing in Blend and look forward to more books on the subject.
Cons: My only gripe is the lack of color diagrams on a subject that focuses on COLOR: need to have the diagrams of the book posted online somewhere to make this a perfect 5 star experience.

I'm sort of shocked to read bad reviews on this book, I found it extremely informative and approachable. Being a newcomer to Blend and Silverlight both, I found that this book did a great job of giving you the ability to get up and running in a short time without bogging me down in minutiae that may or may not have been relevant to my interests. It gives you a very solid overview of all the important functions of Blend, in a hands on, real world way. If you're new to these tools you couldn't find a better introduction.

I'm an experienced asp.net c# developer and I started this book after completing a ramp-up on Silverlight development over the past couple months. I expected a book aimed at how to make good use of Expression Blend 3. The book accomplished that goal and also taught me quite a bit more about programming in Silverlight using c#. This book is very useful for several reasons:

1.The author answered my email when I had questions and was eager to help me. He pointed me toward the website that I couldn't get to because there was some case problem in the URL.

2.There is a detailed list of errors and typos in the book with corrections that every reader should download.

3.There are example projects available for download that all work.

4.While some reviewers complained that they were shown "what" to do but not "why." I did not see this as a problem as it is easy to Bing the Docs and read up on Dependency Properties or whatever it is you don't understand.

5.The book steps you through the projects clearly and accurately and it was fun building the projects.

6.The fact that the book uses a pre-release version of Expression 3 was not a problem for me. Where differences occur I had to just back up and think about what was being accomplished and figure out how to accomplish that in the final version.

7.The reader is taught just enough about how to create cool visual effects to be able to go further on their own.

I would recommend this book to any c# developer who wants to learn to take advantage of Blend. I also imagine it would be good for designers who aren't afraid to write a little c#.

This book is a very fast read. The author includes a LOT of pictures and shows you how to create some really great projects. The high point is where he walks you though creating a video player that uses "glassy orbs" for the main interface. His writing style is "look over my shoulder as I walk you through creating this example in real time". This makes it easy to follow and understand.

I have used earlier version of Expression Blend, but I never knew the "secrets" like how to make a ball appear as if a light is shining on it. I would not have been able to figure out things like that without the book. The book covers advanced subjects like MVVM but is definitely suitable for complete beginners.

The book also covers SketchFlow in a nice tight chapter that also shows you how to use the Visual State Manager (not an easy topic to cover but very important when using SketchFlow).

I would highly recommend this book to people out there that don't really have any prior knowlegde in WPF/SilverLight. I am a Web Designer with little to no knowledge of C# but this book gets you up and running fast. It gives you a good overview of Expression Blend 3 and how to use all the tools to start creating a RIA (Rich Internet Application). Victor Gaudioso does a great job of explaining what he is doing and why he is doing it. He has also gone above and beyond as a resource for not just the book but with any SilverLight questions I have had so far. I have emailed him numerous times with questions about the information in the book and with personal project questions. Each time he has responded immediately with great answers to my questions. He also maintains an ongoing blog with video tutorials based on questions he gets from his readers. Buy this book if you are looking to get into SilverLight so Victor Gaudioso can continuing to do this in the future.