15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
By far the best resource for Silverlight 3.0, November 7, 2009
This review is from: Pro Silverlight 3 in C# (Expert's Voice in Silverlight) (Paperback)
This book is by far the best resource for Silverlight 3.0. In this version the author added a whopping 185 pages to the last edition. He added chapters on Data Controls, separated the Styles, Templates, and Custom Controls into two separate chapters name Styles and Behaviors, and Templates and Custom Controls, and added a new chapter on Navigation.
I have bought 3 other books on Silverlight 3, and put together they only contain about 1/8 of the value of this book (you can see which ones they are by Googling "Shiny Turds Books that do not Cut the Mustard").
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, 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 3.0.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Awesome - The Best Silverlight 3 Book Period, November 6, 2009
This review is from: Pro Silverlight 3 in C# (Expert's Voice in Silverlight) (Paperback)
First the good news - the PDF version of this book and source code are available now from the APRESS web site.
I have had this book on order for so long that Amazon actually cancelled my first order.
The PDF (and I am sure the print version) is in full color.
The book is an updated version of MacDonald's Silverlight 2 book - from the PDF it appears to have the same print quality which is superb.
If you want to learn Silverlight 3, this is the book to own - period.
David Roh
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
In-depth coverage for developers with some knowledge of Silverlight, January 27, 2010
This review is from: Pro Silverlight 3 in C# (Expert's Voice in Silverlight) (Paperback)
This is an excellent book, but with a couple of qualifications. First, it's not a tutorial-oriented book. If you're brand new to Silverlight and learn well by doing guided walk-throughs, you might want to start elsewhere. I started out with some online tutorials and another book (Silverlight 2 Unleashed). I found the content here really helped round out my knowledge of Silverlight. MacDonald does go a lot deeper than the other sources I've used.
Second, don't expect coverage of Expression Blend for designing applications - there's almost no coverage here. Creating complex animations and styles can be much easier in Blend, so you'd want to get that coverage elsewhere. It certainly helps to understand how things like layout and animations work under the hood, and the book gives a good grounding there.
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