Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

This is certainly a thorough book, at 1000 pages highly suitable for thumping down on tables in order to impress people with the kinds of arcane stuff you get into. There are an awful lot of gotchas in WPF for the newbie, and one of the strengths of this book is that it has lots of detail about these unexpected behavioral quirks that would otherwise have you tearing your hair out and swearing at your innocent monitor. However, as a learning tool for someone who knows nothing about WPF - surely most of its likely readership - it isn't the clearest or easiest read. Compare it to a truly excellent technical book like my all-time favorite Albahari's "C# in a Nutshell": Albahari starts with simple topics, clearly explained, and gradually progresses to the more difficult and obscure. Macdonald starts his explanation of Dependency Properties with how you create your own ones in .NET: a complicated operation which I for one had no interest in at that point, since I didn't even get what they were yet!
Same story with Control Templates: we get the whole stuff about visual trees before we get to see a simple example. Most of the time, we developers try to start by *doing* something with the technology, before we worry too much about the arcana of how it all hangs together under the hood. More grievously though, Macdonald doesn't actually explain how one's newly created control template is applied to an actual control. I guess one is assumed to be able to work out something so obvious for oneself! All his examples show control template markup, but nothing about how they get applied to the control they are templating. Sure, it's easy once you know, and you can see how it's done in the downloadable code for the book, but something so fundamental should be explained in the text, and right at the start.

I don't know if the better-known Applications=Markup+Code does a better job as a tutorial, so I can't tell you to buy something else, but to be honest I'm sort of wishing I had.

I ordered this book and WPF Unleashed (Adam Nathan) at the same time. I read WPF Unleashed first because I saw the reviews on Amazon.com. Then I read this title, Pro WPF in C# 2008.

I found this to be a much better book than WPF Unleashed. It's thicker, has more content, and dives much deeper. Don't get me wrong, they are both excellent books and I recommend them both. But if you really want to understand core WPF concepts, this book is the better choice.

Having been a programmer for more than 15 years, but moved into management for the last five, I wanted to try and get back up to speed with the new advancements in .NET 3.5 as they related to WPF. There has been a lot of hype about the benefits of WPF, but from an outside view all I had seen were some basic examples, noting that would make me think it was for a serious business environment.

So I decided the best way to learn WPF was grab a few books. I purchased this title and one other. I stated on the other as it has flash color pictures though it was only half the size. I put it down half way through and moved on to this book and have not looked back.

The content is far better organised, has more depth, better examples and is generally just better structured. The author walks through each topic logically and builds up from the basics to more complex and complete examples as they take you through the chapter.

If I was to only buy one book on the topic, so far this would be it. As a programmer with years of experience, I don't find it treating me like a fool. At the same time, it guides you through the learning process so on the more experienced topics you don't feel out of depth.

Definitely the book to buy!

Really a very nice introduction to WPF, it includes all the details to include win32 controls in WPF windows and WPF controls in WinForms app. I definitaly recommend this book!

What makes developers who migrate from WinForms, MFC, etc. excited on WPF is the plenty of paths that goes to the customization of built-in/user-defined controls.

This book covers all aspects of control customization clearer than any other online article, or book on WPF that I've read.

It's initially my primary source of information on WPF, as it has a broad coverage of topics with a well defined scope.

I purchased many of the WPF books out there for myself and my team. This book has become my new favorite (with Chris Sells WPF book coming in second - sorry Chris!). The book goes into more details about why things work the way they do instead of just saying this is how it should be done. Books that provide deep understanding of a topic are hard to find in today's mantra of pushing low budget tech books out the door for copy and paste code examples. The author finds just the right balance of code, pictures and words. With this book you get 800 pages of information and not 800 pages of code examples printed page after page after page.

This is one of a handful of books that stays on my desk at all times, and it is usually open. I find myself constantly referring to it as a resource for important WPF concepts and samples. I have not found another book yet that covers the topics I need as thoroughly as this one does.

I would not recommend this as the first book one should read on WPF. The scope of the book is very wide and the coverage is deep and may quickly overwhelm a reader who has not already been exposed to the basics. That being said, I wholeheartedly recommend this book for anyone with at least introductory exposure who has more than a passing interest in WPF and XAML.