Pro Silverlight 3 in VB (Books for Professionals by Professionals) [Paperback]

Matthew MacDonald (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1430224274 | ISBN-13: 978-1430224273 | Publication Date: November 18, 2009 | Edition: 2nd ed.

Silverlight is a lightweight browser plug-in that frees your code from the traditional confines of the browser. It's a rules-changing, groundbreaking technology that allows you to run rich client applications right inside the browser. Even more impressively, it's able to host true .NET applications in non-Microsoft browsers (like Firefox) and on non-Microsoft platforms (like Mac OS X). Silverlight is still new and evolving fast, and you need a reliable guidebook to make sense of it.

Pro Silverlight 3 in VB, Second Edition is the perfect reference to ensure you are informed and up to date: you'll learn about the features that put Silverlight in direct competition with Adobe Flash, such as rich support for 2D drawing, animations, and media playback, and best of all, you'll experience the plumbing of .NET and the design model of WPF through Silverlight—all of the same .NET technology that developers use to design next-generation Windows applications. Author Matthew MacDonald provides an expertly crafted tutorial written from professional developer to professional developer. You'll learn to create rich media applications using Silverlight in the environment you’re most productive in—no matter what the target platform.

What you’ll learn

• Develop rich media applications using Silverlight and Visual Basic across browsers and platforms
• Create a project, set up a layout, and use controls
• Handle 2D drawing, animation, and media playback through Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)
• Integrate web services support
• Use Silverlight in conjunction with ASP.NET and its interactions with HTML

Who this book is for

This book is for .NET developers encountering Silverlight for the first time. No prior knowledge of WPF or ASP.NET is assumed.

Table of Contents

1. Introducing Silverlight
2. XAML
3. Layout
4. Dependency Properties and Routed Events
5. Elements
6. The Application Model
7. Navigation
8. Shapes and Geometries
9. Brushes, Transforms, and Bitmaps
10. Animation
11. Sound, Video, and Deep Zoom
12. Styles and Behaviors
13. Templates and Custom Controls
14. Browser Integration
15. ASP.NET Web Services
16. Data Binding
17. Data Controls
18. Isolated Storage
19. Multithreading
20. Networking

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Matthew MacDonald is an author, educator, and MCSD developer who has a passion for emerging technologies. He is a regular writer for developer journals such as Inside Visual Basic, ASPToday, and Hardcore Visual Studio .NET, and he's the author of several books about programming with .NET, including User Interfaces in VB .NET: Windows Forms and Custom Controls, The Book of VB .NET, and .NET Distributed Applications. In a dimly- remembered past life, he studied English literature and theoretical physics. Send e-mail with praise, condemnation, and everything in between, to [e-mail].

Product Details

• Paperback: 816 pages
• Publisher: Apress; 2nd ed. edition (November 18, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1430224274
• ISBN-13: 978-1430224273
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.6 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,197,331 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Matthew MacDonald is an author, educator, and MCSD developer who has a passion for emerging technologies. He is a regular writer for developer journals such as Inside Visual Basic, ASPToday, and Hardcore Visual Studio .NET, and he's the author of several books about programming with .NET. In a dimly remembered past life, he studied English literature and theoretical physics. Send e-mail to him with praise, condemnation, and everything in between, to [e-mail].

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars All You Need to Become an Expert in Silverlight in VB, December 12, 2009

By 

Marie - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Pro Silverlight 3 in VB (Books for Professionals by Professionals) (Paperback)

Great job on this one. The author is highly knowledgeable about Silverlight and spares no detail. His enthusiasm for the technology shows in his writing. Very exciting and detailed way to learn Silverlight and all its massive capabilities. I definitely recommend the book for VB programmers.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars By Far the Best Resource for Silverlight 3.0, December 20, 2009

By 

T. Anderson (PA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Pro Silverlight 3 in VB (Books for Professionals by Professionals) (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"). I have bought 2 copies of this book, both the C# and the VB.NET version.

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.