Customer Reviews

Illustrated WPF (Expert's Voice in .NET)

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If you are a WPF architect, programmer or serious WPF student, you must get a copy of "Illustrated WPF" by Dan Solis. Solis has an uncanny ability to combine figures/diagrams with a few concise paragraphs to visually show how WPF actually works. It's like having a WPF guru explain WPF by drawing little pictures on a white board while she talks.

This book is well-suited for students learning WPF or experienced WPF programmers who need a quick refresher of key WPF concepts. The code samples are short and to the point. It does not have complicated samples which are found in many other WPF books.

Other WPF books typically describe a concept in text and then illustrate that concept using code samples and screen shots. The reader is left to translate the text into a mental image which he needs to really understand the concept. This is a significant obstacle for people trying to learn WPF. Solis literally draws you the "big picture" and shows you how the WPF pieces fit together visually. This is particularly evident in Solis's explanation of dependency properties and WPF commands, which are missing, glossed over or undecipherable in other books.

This book is an ideal complement to Microsoft's online documentation and other reference manuals. I use Solis's illustrations to trace what the documentation is trying to say. I've had a number of "ah-ha, I now see what that means" moments while studying the illustrations.

I often download code samples to see how other programmers have implemented a particular WPF feature. Samples from Microsoft tech evangelists or WPF Disciples are among my favorites. Unfortunately, samples by experts frequently have a snippet or two of arcane WPF usage, such as data binding, templates or animation in Xaml. Solis's book has helped me quickly unravel those code snippets without plowing through a whole chapter of another book.

Finally, if you liked Solis's "Illustrated C# 2008 (Windows.Net)" book you will definitely see that "Illustrated WPF" has the same approach and high value. I highly recommend both of them.

I have found this book to be the only one which I could follow until the end. I have purchased Nathan's unleashed and also had a glimpse on pro WPF, and I couldn't read them past the second chapter. Not to say that these are not good books, but somehow you must already know WPF before reading them.

What this book is not:
>> A thick reference volume on WPF
>> A volume covering advanced subjects

What this book is:
>> A book that makes clear to the reader the nuances of WPF like interconnection with a markup language XAML, data binding, dependency/attached properties, routing events etc, e.g. the basic stuff of WPF but also the most frustrating to a reader first entering the world of WPF. The author makes clear from the start what a WPF app. is composed of and what all these files are when you start a new WPF project in VS, etc.

After reading this book (which i repeat is very easy to follow) you can:

>> (At last) read many articles and subjects on various blogs in net about WPF
>> Read with confidence and clear mind more extended books
>> start to play with WPF

That's the best starting book on WPF I think

ps. sorry for the syntax and mispellings

If you are new to WPF, or as in my case, you'd gotten your feet wet but are having trouble grasping the basics, this book is a perfect first stop. Dan Solis uses his illustrations to give the reader a useful perspective into the inner workings of WPF, though a few of the illustrations felt like they were included as a matter of principal to fit the title. Before reading this book I found myself mired in various online examples and tutorials, typically written to achieve very specific goals. Though I ultimately found these useful (particularly when revisiting them after reading the corresponding sections of this book), they didn't improve my fundamental understanding of the technology. Illustrated WPF gave me that foundation.

One aspect of the book I liked in particular is how the author used both XAML and imperative code to demonstrate how to use the technology - whereas online resources almost always only include the XAML. Though in practice you might rarely create WPF elements imperatively, this was extremely beneficial to me because it eliminated the "magic" of WPF.

I would not consider this book the end-all learning material, but rather a first step. WPF has far more depth than what is covered in this book, but I would recommend anyone who is diving into this unique technology to do it with this book.

I bought this book in July and it sat on the shelf until two weeks ago. When I finally decided to attack WPF, I bought the latest books so I could understand how it worked with VS 2010. I opened MAtthew MacDonald's book (Pro WPF in C# 2010) and started reading. Very quickly, I felt a little overwhelmed with all the details coming at me and no "mental mailbox" to keep them in perspective. I've found this is very common with technical books. It's not that the authors don't know their stuff. They do, but they don't write from the perspective of the reader and, as a result, little knowledge transfer takes place during the first read.

Fortunately, I remembered this book and started reading. BAM! What a difference! Here was an author that understood how to transfer understanding to users very effectively! His writing style and fantastic illustrations had me really understanding things in a hurry. Take dependency properties. No other author had presented them to me in a way that "stuck to the wall". Until now! They are extremely powerful once you understand them and know how to leverage what they can deliver. With Dan's help, I'm now very comfortable with them.

I'm a long time programmer specializing in delivering solutions on the Microsoft platform. I avoided WPF till now because it was such a major change and one I was a little intimidated by. I've now decided to take the plunge. Without this book, it would be a much more difficult task. With this book, I think my odds of WPF success have improved dramatically! If you want help from somebody who not only knows WPF, but also knows how to teach and achieve true knowledge transfer, buy this book!

This book is great if you want an overview of everything that WPF has to offer, but don't need/want extremely in-depth coverage. I read this book and was able to get up and running in the WPF world with no issues. Once I starting getting deeper into WPF though, I found I was referring to my Pro WPF in C# 2010 book (which is more than 1000 pages) more, but this book was a great start. Highly recommended.

I'm a SQL Server MVP with 32 years of database programming who's now diving into C# and WPF. I've written 7 books, so I'm a bit of a "clear writing" snob. I've purchased a bookshelf full of C# and WPF books, but this is the one that makes the most sense to me. While most books have a brief intro to an example and expect you to inductively figure out the technology from the example, Daniel actually explains the technology and then presents the example.

From another author who can judge writing quality, this is the best book to buy on WPF, it's far better than some of the other highly rated books regardless of the page count. Daniel's clear thinking shines through his concise writing style. Well done.

This book is one of the few good WPF books available. It explain things with diagrams very clearly. I'd highly recommend it.

This is the best book for somebody new to WPF. The concepts are explained very clearly with diagrams that help to embed the concepts in your mind. It is a tough job to select the topics to include in a book on a topic as vast as WPF. I believe the author has done an excellent job in selecting the topics. WPF has some new concepts that the developers should understand very well to be an efficient WPF programmer. This book has done a good job in explaining those concepts in a very clear manner. The author has NOT tried to make this book to be a one stop for everything WPF. In my opinion that is the strongest point of this book. Once you are done reading this book you should get a book which goes into more details such as the one by Adam Nathan or Mathew MacDonald.

The first thing that came to my mind while browsing through this book at Borders is that Daniel Solis has a great talent for teaching. I am not new to WPF, but I still bought the book just to support the author. I want him to write more books. It would a great sin to waste such talent.

I also bought his Illustrated C# 2008 for my wife who is learning C# as her first programming language and she is liking it so far. (she had already read Charles Petzold's Programming in the Key of C#: A Primer for Aspiring Programmers, so Illustrated C# is not her first C# book).

This is the book. If you're wondering which book is best for learning WPF, you've found it. Having read portions of other books that cover the topic, and heard other people's opinions, one would think that WPF is a difficult environment to grasp. Not so, and this book proves it. Granted, it's a different model if you are used to WinForms or MFC approaches to Windows GUI's. It's a more complex tool, since it provides much more functionality. Solis does a good job in providing clear, understandable, and confidence-building material. Even though it's half the size of some other WPF volumes, he somehow manages to still cover the lion's share of topics as those other books. This is my first review on Amazon, but the author does such a great job, that I felt it necessary to let others know. Although it isn't tagged to a particular .NET version, he does have some material on the newer controls in 2010 (.NET 4.0). The coding examples are in C#, which stands to reason. As a long-time C++ developer, I have to admit that if one enters the managed environment, it's time to throw out other languages like C++, VB and Delphi, and stick to C#.

If you are a student of WPF and looking for something from a different prospective, this book is well worth it. The diagrams along with explanations provide different angle on learning and it helps overcome some material more difficult to absorb. In some cases, a little simplified for where I'm at (intermeddiate), but I stick to certain sections of interest. I'm still picking up many gems. The material/knowledge I've picked up has already paid off. The illustrations are well constructed and thought out. The book is well written, easier to absorb, and a little more entertaining than most.