Pro WPF in C# 2008: Windows Presentation Foundation with .NET 3.5 (Books for Professionals by Professionals) [Paperback]

Matthew MacDonald (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 7, 2008 | Series: Books for Professionals by Professionals

The Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation provides the foundation for building applications and high–quality user experiences in Windows Vista. WPF blends application user interface, documents, and media content to provide richer control, design, and development of the visual aspects of Windows programs.

Author Matthew MacDonald shows you how WPF really works. His no–nonsense, practical advice will get you building high–quality WPF applications quickly and easily. MacDonald will take you through a thorough investigation of the more advanced aspects of WPF, and its relation to other elements of the WinFX stack and the .NET Framework 3.5, to complete your understanding of WPF and C# 2008.

WPF's functionality extends to support for tablet PCs and other forms of input devices, and provides a more modern imaging and printing pipeline, accessibility and user interface automation infrastructure, data–driven user interface and visualization, as well as the integration points for weaving the application experience into the Windows shell.

What you’ll learn

• WPF basics: XAML, layout, control essentials, and data flow
• WPF applications: Navigation, commands, localization, and deployment
• Advanced controls: Custom controls, menus, toolbars, and trees
• WPF documents: Text layout, printing, and document packaging
• Graphics and multimedia: Drawing shapes, sound and video, animation, geometric transformations, and imaging

Who this book is for

Developers encountering WPF and .NET 3.5 for the first time in their professional lives.

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: 1040 pages
• Publisher: Apress; 2 edition (March 7, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590599551
• ISBN-13: 978-1590599556
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 2.1 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (39 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #449,313 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Matthew MacDonald is a science and technology writer with well over a dozen books to his name. He's particularly known for his books about building websites, which include a do-it-from-scratch tutorial (Creating a Website: The Missing Manual), a look at cutting-edge HTML5 (HTML5: The Missing Manual), and a WordPress primer (WordPress: The Missing Manual). He's also written a series of books about programming on and off the Web with .NET, teaches programming at Ryerson University, and is a three-time Microsoft MVP.

In everyday life, Matthew is endlessly amazed by the odd, unusual, and just plain bonkers workings of the natural world. Those who don't have tech problems to solve can check out Matthew MacDonald's science books, where he debugs the quirks and complexities of the human brain (Your Brain: The Missing Manual) and body (Your Body: The Missing Manual). Both books include a mash-up of full-color pictures, trivia, and philosophical head-scratchers. Matthew lives in Toronto, with his wife and two daughters.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 39 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars I highly recommend the book... March 14, 2008

By T. Anderson TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I have the first edition of this book (Pro WPF: Windows Presentation Foundation in .NET 3.0), so I was hesitant in buying this version. WPF 3.5 did not have major feature upgrades from 3.0. I am glad that I did buy it, but I can't really recommend doing so for other people with the .NET 3.0 version, only because there is not that much new material.

However, I highly recommend the book if you don't own the previous edition. I also highly recommend it even if you have the first one and you are like me and pretty much trashed my first edition copy. It has been through several storms and has a lot of notes and ink running all over it. So it is nice to have a new copy to beat the crap out of. I also like having the latest information I am using up to date.

Here is what is new in this release:
--Firefox support for XBAPs.
--Data binding support for LINQ.
--Data binding support for IDataErrorInfo.
--Support for placing interactive controls (such as buttons) inside a RichTextBox control.
--Support for placing 2-D elements on 3-D surfaces.
--An add-in model.

Matthew has added content for all the topics listed above.

Some of the highlights of the book I like:
--His in-depth coverage of printing.
--His Custom Elements chapter.
--The new chapter on Application Add-Ins.
--The chapter on using ClickOnce with WPF.
--Everything is gone into in depth. This is not a brush over the topic book.
--The usability of the code makes the book all that much more valuable.

The book focuses on WPF only. It has a few pages on LINQ, but that is about it as far as the rest of the .NET 3.5 framework goes. In other words, the book does not cover how to best use WPF in relationship to WCF, WF, or LINQ. This does not take anything away from the book because Matthew does not claim that the book does this. I only mention it because his ASP.NET 3.5 book does go into LINQ application integration.

The downloadable code is very well organized and is very usable.

I highly recommend this book to anyone getting into WPF with .NET 3.5.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars WPF is next great Web/Winform Standard March 18, 2008

By Franc Stratton

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Please buy this book if you haven't explored Windows Presentation Foundation. The separation of the UI (with XAML) and the code-behind page controller (C# or VB.NET) will revolutionize .NET development. If you don't have a designer you must learn Microsoft Expression Blend, but a UI designer will push your view (from Model-View-Controller) to the extreme.

The browser-based XBAP works like a Winform app, but it can be viewed in Internet Explorer. If you've ever tried to create a dirty flag to denote changes in form data in ASP.NET, you know how superior Winforms are for this purpose. XBAPs give you the ability to access the textbox text changed event like Winforms. This takes a ton of JavaScript to accomplish the same programming task in ASP.NET forms.

The update of the application to the client machine (the XBAP runs on the client) can be done with new technolgy called ClickOnce. What a technology!

I've even tried to learn the XAML markup from a very good chapter on this.

This book is really well done. Kudos to the author.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A great way to learn WPF April 11, 2008

By Charles J. Jurczak

Format:Paperback

I've bought three books about WPF, including Windows Presentation Foundation Foundation Unleashed and Silverlight 1.0 Unleashed. Matthew MacDonald's book is for developers and is what I needed. It uses Visual Studio 2008 and is up to date with current development tools. I've also read his books on ASP.NET and this is one top-notch author. I fully recommend this book.