Customer Reviews

Pro Silverlight 4 in C#

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is by far the best resource for Silverlight 4.0. In this version the author added a whopping 273 pages to the last edition. He added chapters on File Access and Out-of-Browser Applications. There is also a new section on commands..

I have bought 3 other books on Silverlight 4, and put together they only contain about 1/8 of the value of this book (you can see which ones they are by Googling ".NET Architecture and Development Book Recommendations 2010 End of Year" and checking out the Shiny Turds Books that do not Cut the Mustard section of the post).

One other Silverlight 4 book that is worth getting is Silverlight 4 in Action

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, file access, commands, 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 4.0.

This is very good book for learning or sharpening your Silverlight skills. Other reviews have made this point, so I won't bother to elaborate further.

The BIG drawback of the Kindle version is the index. If you're like me, I use the index a lot. The Kindle version's index still uses page numbers with no active link to the indexed location. This is totally useless on a Kindle. It is extremely frustrating since the index doesn't even give you a chapter/section hint, let alone a location number that you could plug into the Kindle to take you to the referenced material. It makes the Kindle version much less useful than the bound version.

So you need to weigh the convenience of having it on your Kindle/iPad/etc. against the frustration of trying to make sense out of the useless index. For this reason I give it 3 stars instead of the 5 I'd give the bound version.

Publishers need to address this problem if they want to sell eBook versions of their technical books. Until this problem is addressed I will probably not buy anymore technical eBooks.

Although I have many years of development experience, I have had limited exposure to the development of web-based applications. My expertise has been in thick-client development and more recently mobile devices. With the upcoming Windows Phone 7 release and its use of Silverlight I decided it was time to expand my horizons.

Don't let a book that is almost 900 pages and has Pro in the title scare you if you are like me. I found this book struck the perfect balance for people just starting out as well as those who may be more experienced in older versions of Silverlight. The author made it a point to highlight any feature that is new to 4.0 which I would think to be very helpful for the latter group.

The author starts by providing an overview of Silverlight and the tools that are used to build applications then gives you a quick taste of creating a simple application and getting it running. The following chapters give the reader a good foundation of UI construction and eventing without going into so much detail as to overwhelm the novice or frustrate the expert. With a good foundation built, the book dives into elements and the application model, navigation, animation then on to more advanced topics such as user controls and multitasking.

One refreshing aspect of the experience was the sample code which was easily downloaded and actually worked. Too often I have had to struggle just to get samples working in the past but not so with this book.

Apress has become my go-to publisher for my technical books over the past couple years. I have a pretty good collection going and I have found each of them to be well organized, well written, and their Companion eBook feature for $10 each allows me to take my collection on the road with me.

In summary, I can recommend this book for anyone interested in developing in Silverlight 4 regardless of their current level of experience. Quality book, eBook option, working sample source, make this one a winner.

I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn Silverlight 4.0.

This book covers the basics of Silverlight and covers all the topics to get you started. It does not assume that you need to know anything about Silverlight. The treatment is so nice that even begineers can understand the concept without any difficulty though the title says Pro.

The author has taken pain to cover all minute details and it really shows in the book. The flow is nice covering various topics taking you step by step with color text to highlight the code to be focused on.

Though this book covers the topics it is meant for which is Silverlight - it does not cover WCF RIA services and the business side of writing applications. The book is oriented towards covering only UI concepts and it does this very well. The reason is because there is another book to cover how to write business application and it shown in the road map on the back cover.

Overall I strongly recommend this book to everyone as it is nice to read the book and also could be used as a reference.

As the title says, I have read almost every Silverlight book out there. I consider this book an "abstract base class" in that I would suggest some additional books to provide you with a concrete understanding of Silverlight. One of these additional books is Silverlight 4 Unleashed and since I've already written an exhaustive review under that Amazon page, I'll just give you the permalink to that review: [...]

I discuss this book in addition to several others and I offer some guidance that I hope will be helpful to readers coming from multiple disciplines :)

I have several other books on Silverlight from version 2 onward. Yet, this is the best overall introduction that I have read. The book has a clear start and a comprehensive continuing exposure to all the Silverlight features and practices until it reaches the end of its run. Some of the material has been displayed in other Silverlight books, but it has been expanded here and the overall explanations are more complete in this volume. I wish I had been able to read this book two years ago when I was restarting my education in website design. Currently, I have two clients who's website development will benefit from the better descriptions found here.

I especially found the in-depth coverage on deep zoom, networking, animation and templates enlightning. I'm currently designing a website using page flip animation with custom control templates. So far it's been too much experimentation and not enough success. My control templates are getting far too long and only operate part way. And the page flipping doesn't work consistantly. After reading this book, I believe that I have enough information to make everything work properly.

So, if you want to get a great overall look at the latest version of Silverlight or you just want so save a lot of time getting to be a Silverlight expert, stop right here and read this book.

I'm going to fire up my new Visual Studio 2010 and try out my old website designs with the new knowledge and see what I can accomplish.

The Pro Silverlight 4 in C# by Matthew MacDonald is another winner for Apress. In general I've always preferred Pro-series books because of their detailed information about the subject.

This book covered a lot of important materials and my favorites included Application Model (thoroughly discussed Silverlight life cycle), File Access (talked about Isolated Storage and other ways you can save/open files), Networking (included socket programming in Silverlight), and a long discussion about Out-of-Browser applications.

Matthew was also nice enough to point you to other resources when some items are not covered like information about WCF RIA.

This book is a great reference and must add it to your own library.

Ferdinand Espiritu

This book is nothing short of a triumph. So much information packed into it. Download code works (it is so nice when the code works - many authors cannot deliver this). Definitely recommended.

It's a great book, all colour pages and with code examples that are perfect for designers that want to know exactly what are they drawing with blend.

This is an excellent book. It has nice examples explaining things in a easy way to understand and its content is very well structurated. It also is a very useful reference for any hour!