Customer Reviews

Programming Windows Presentation Foundation

5 star:		(50)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I say to ignore those reviews because they do not refer to this book. This is the second edition published August 28, 2007 with 863 pages. Those reviews are based off of the first edition published nearly two years before (September 12, 2005) and with only 447 pages.

Using Amazon's 'Search inside this book' takes you to the 2005 edition also. That shows only 10 chapters while this edition has 17. Most of the negative comments from the 2 and 3 star reviewers seem to have been resolved.

Wow things sure have changed since the early days of Windows programming!! The first thing that hits you as you open up '
Programming Windows Presentation Foundation' by Chris Sells and begin to learn how to program Windows for the future is how different things are compared to where they were just a few years ago when MFC was still the norm.

Gone are the confusing syntax of MFC and deciding whether to put things in the Document or View part of your application. Gone is the hard to follow API and gone are the basic graphics and simple controls that you once had!! As I went through this book I was truly astounded at how different programming in Windows will be for Vista... while daunting in HOW different this is from the past, I love that fact that Microsoft has worked to try and simplify things in that each "page" is like an application in itself. Since everything is class-based in .NET, each XAML page has its very own class associated with it that can be used to easy talk and populate the Vista page in question that you are coding.

It's quite clear that with the next generation of Windows, one of the main focus points was the graphical side of things. With WPF, there are a myriad of graphics APIs built in, and it's very easy to create shapes, animations, effects, etc. with a very simple set of code.

This is an important work, important because it is getting a taste of Avalon out to the public very early and will allow programmers to start getting familiar with it right away. The writing style is easy to follow and examples are present throughout to give the reader plenty of opportunity to see the next generation of Windows in all its glory. I was happily surprised to turn to the middle of an O'Reilly book and see COLOR pages to emphasize the kind of graphical abilities that are built in = nice touch!!

No doubt with this being a beta book that things will change as we get closer to the Vista release date, but this is a required read for anyone that will be programming on the newest generation of Windows in the future.

***** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

While Avalon aka Windows Presentation Framework is still in beta, I had hoped that the code examples and references in this book would not be far out of date. I am finding that they are dramatically out of date (writing this review 04/27/2006). This is not to criticize the quality of the book or of the content; it appears to be well written. However, it was written in September 2005, and there has been at least 3 new beta releases of the framework since then. About 1/2 of the examples I have tried will not even compile, or have bad runtime errors.

The "big concepts" are mostly unchanged. However, I cannot recommend this book to anyone. Programmer to programmer, you will be better off reading examples from online sources like msdn.microsoft.com and downloading new WPF tools like "Expression". This book will find you confused with broken examples fast. I look forward to an updated version when Avalon solidifies.

I learned more on wpf from Microsoft Expression blend tutorials on weblogs than i did in this book.

It will tell you a lot about
1)Layout (manual layout in code/xaml)
2)Graphics (manual graphics in code/xaml)

It will NOT tell you about
1) dynamic data binding
2) how to create an app start to finish using expression and all of the tools available to you for wpf
3) how to validate data
4) how to use the navigation service and pages
5) how to use page functions
6) how to use property bags


And those are just the road blocks i've run into so far and had to research on my own. This book really let me down by not giving me even the slightest hint into the tools i would need to finish a business project!

A person learning C# programming like me needs a method to gather user input and show results to users; WPF is the obvious choice. This book provides a good overview of WPF and gets you started programming it. However, you will still have to make frequent reference to the Microsoft library documentation for details of the various classes. Also, many of the examples are advanced and presume you are just adding on WPF knowledge to a strong .NET probramming background. This makes the book of limited value to beginners.

I've read hundreds of technical books; this is one of the best. Period, and without exaggeration.

Sells and Griffiths combine phenomenal insight into the technology with years of practical application and an extraordinary ability to convey highly technical material in a way that is clear, concise and coherent. I wish I knew as much as they, or wrote as well; and that is not false modesty: they are the gold standard.

The second edition builds on the foundations they laid in the first, but goes well beyond. If you bought the first edition do not hesitate to buy the second; it not only updates the material, but adds at least half again as much new information and greatly expands on the insights they have to offer.

There are other books on WPF well worth owning, but this book is absolutely mandatory. If you have only enough money for one, this is the one. If you can't afford this one, then give up Starbucks and start drinking Dunkin'... 'cause you have to have this one.

On a personal note, Ian has tech-reviewed one of my books, and I can personally attest to the depth and breadth and comprehensiveness of his knowledge. He knows whereof he speaks; and I've yet to find a single instance where his understanding was shallow, let alone wrong. He brings a rigor to his writing that is not marred by pedanticism, and together, he and Chris Sells have managed that most difficult of feats: a two-author book that speaks with a single, clear voice that leaves you with few questions.

This is a six-star book; don't hesitate. In fact, stop reading my silly review and buy the book.

[NB: My opinions expressed here are my own and do not reflect those of Microsoft Corporation, O'Reilly Media or any other entity real or fictitious. Your mileage may vary. Contents are hot. Void where prohibited.]


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Updated 2/24/08

I'm working on learning Silverlight 2 very fast. And I have very limited resources: the compiler (which is changing every day), the documentation (which is changing every day) and numerous books on WPF (which is very nearly a superset of Silverlight 2).

When I read through the 3 main books on WPF I liked them all, though at the time I gave this one the nod, albeit just barely. But now I'm not reading through them, my professional life is on the line. I have real work to do on very tight deadlines and tough concepts to understand fully (concepts like Dependency Properties and Routed Events) and little time to learn them fully and viscerally.

No other book comes close. The documentation is very good, but it doesn't come close. This book is by far the best resource and it is because Chris and Ian have the ideal combination of a deep understanding of the technology and an unusual ability to convey that to their target audience (which, as far as I can tell, is me).

Writing a book that can make powerful and important concepts immediately clear, accessible and usable is uniquely valuable, and makes this book a clear candidate for Programming Book of the Decade.

-Jesse Liberty
Senior Program Manager - Silverlight Development Division
Silverlight Geek
Author
(Opinions expressed are mine alone)

A quick background of my skills prior to reading the book so you know where I'm coming from:
- Strong: C++, Win32, 2D UI
- Learning: C#, .NET, WPF, XAML, XML

Being extremely anxious to dig in to WPF, I was seeking a book that would hold my hand through the process but by the end, leave no stones unturned. This book comes close.

My first attempt at learning was "Windows Presentation Foundation Unleashed" by Adam Nathan. I quickly became frustrated with the book because I was regularly feeling lost. You know, like when you are conversing with a really intelligent person who has a hard time helping you connect the dots. I do recommend Adam's book as a supplement as it's got good material and is in full color. After reading the reviews for "Programming WPF" by Sells & Griffiths I took the leap.

I read the book cover to cover minus 3 chapters: 3D, Interoperability and Async/Multithreaded -- about 700 of 800 pages. Usually books this fat have lots of useless pages. Not this book, no sir, which just goes to show how much there is to learn about WPF and XAML. In a word, the book is brilliant, written for experienced programmers who want to learn WPF and XAML.

It has the same feel as Petzold's Win 3.x books, i.e. Light-hearted, start easy and built to a powerful crescendo as the chapters progress. The latter chapters are no more difficult to digest than the previous chapters, but do build upon previous chapters. That said, I was extremely grateful that the book didn't have a grand project that was slowly built upon chapter by chapter; code examples mostly stood on their own and were plentiful (and they worked as printed!)

As noted above, I know very little about WinForms, and WPF is the obvious successor. Though parallels were duly noted, I was thrilled that there were not constant sidebars saying "Hey Mr. WinForms! Everything's OK! This is just new stuff and you can handle it. Rah! Rah! Rah!" As the authors make abundantly clear from page 1, WPF is light years ahead of WinForms.

As noted above, WPF and XAML are big topics so be prepared to get up and stretch your legs a lot, hold you head frequently and doubt the wisdom of learning new things.

On the down side, the book is weighted a bit too heavily towards XAML for my tastes. Since C# can do absolutely everything (and more) that XAML can do, I wish there were more dual examples that show how XAML does it and then how C# does it. There are examples like this but not enough. This would satisfy the curiousity of developers who wonder about how XAML "magically" achieves things.

Another gripe, now that I am attempting to apply what I have learned: I am frequently having to turn to a Google search to find details not present in the book. For example, the section about event bubbling covers good ground but I immediately had a problem when trying to use bubbling: I was attempting to use it with sibling elements and that does not work but (as far as I can tell) this was not noted in the book. It feels as though the book was not field tested.

And a final gripe: The index is sparse. I am regularly having to pencil in items.

Some brief notes:
- I really hope this book evolves along with WPF's evolution
- The material seemed fresh (as of Oct 2008) except the Silverlight appendix which has aged since Silverlight 2.0 has been released
- The corresponding errata website does not seem to be updated regularly (though I didn't encounter many editing problems)
- Even though the book only has a dozen pages of color plates, you won't feel deprived as the examples will light up your display in all sorts of fun ways.

The biggest strength of this book is that it focus on using WPF programatically, not just laying out XAML. This is extremely useful if you are writing an application for 3D data visualization or a database driven application. You get to learn to create event handlers, generate meshes... all programmatically. I also believe that this book is great, not just as a learning tool, but as a reference guide. It is the most comprehensive book on the subject and a must for the aspiring WPF developer.

If you just want to focus on XAML, however, I will have to recommend "Windows Presentation Foundation Unleashed" by Adam Nathan.

All too often the first several books on a new technology are poorly written. This definitely not the case here. The book is well written and illustrated. The topics are covered clearly and with the level of depth we have come to expect from an O'Reilly walkthrough book.

This book is written in a walkthrough format. This is not an API reference. This book will take you through the API by showing code example and what those look like as displayed in the interface. That's what is needed right now, so I totally understand the style as it's used here.

I've read many "how to program with WPF" books, and already have a year of programming experience in WPF, so I'm really not able to fairly review books like this, at least from a beginner's point of view. However, I am confident that there is enough important material unique to this book that it is a must-have for the shelf of a WPF programmer. Despite its girth (835 pages), it isn't able to explain every facet of WPF in detail - in particular, I noticed that the Border class was given very little reference. I was worried that I wouldn't find much of anything I didn't already know, but I was fortunately wrong on that account, and will close the review by summarizing the most interesting bits (to me):

p. 59: You can safely use data binding with Settings.
p. 136: Explains how focus scope affects command routing.
p. 189: Good information on validation, including custom validation.
p. 226: Grouping with PropertyGroupDescription.
p. 298: Handy table of the template parts used by each control.
p. 336: The ValidateBindings method.
p. 341: You can navigate a NavigationWindow to a string.
p. 379: It's dangerous to use types as resource keys.
ch. 12: Great information on resources.
p. 432: Working with bitmaps and bitmap effects.
p. 484: Low-level text output.
ch. 15: Outstanding information on printing.
p. 672: Using attached properties to identify template placeholders.
p. 730: Screenshots demonstrating airspace issues with interop.