Silverlight 3 Jumpstart [Paperback]

David Yack (Author), Julie Yack (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 10, 2009

Silverlight brings to the table a number of unifying concepts that both web and desktop developers should find appealing to build business applications. The introduction of Silverlight 3 makes real the commitment toward Silverlight being much more than just a media player technology. Silverlight 3 introduces more business focused controls, more data and business logic connectivity as well as what could turn out to be the real Click Once" deployment experience.

The hardest part of learning a new technology is navigating and finding all the right information to get up to speed quickly. The goal of this book is not to teach .NET programming basics. We figure that if you re reading this book you have had some experience doing .NET development. Most people who buy this book are looking for a quick way to get up to speed with Silverlight. More specifically we are going to focus on the parts of Silverlight that are useful for building business applications. This book is the introduction to building business applications with Silverlight. The goal of this book is simple; provide a quick way for an existing .NET developer to learn the basics of Silverlight.

In this book, David Yack shares with readers the information he wishes he could have found in one place when he got started with Silverlight. The book is designed as a quick start learning guide focused on the essential parts of Silverlight a developer new to Silverlight should focus on first.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

David Yack is the CTO of Colorado Technology Consultants, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner based in Colorado. He is a Microsoft Regional Director and a Microsoft MVP for Silverlight. As a senior hands on technology and business consultant with over 20 years of industry experience, David enjoys developing applications on the Microsoft platforms, specializing in large system architecture and design. David embraced Silverlight early on when it used to be called WPF/E. As part of a group of Silverlight insiders David regularly provides product feedback to the Microsoft Silverlight development team. David has been helping clients migrate and build new applications on the Silverlight, as well as helping to mentor and train their staffs. David is a member of the INETA Speaker Bureau and is a frequent speaker at user group and industry events worldwide. David has been on the author team of two other .NET related books and recently completed the book CRM as a Rapid Development Platform. He lives in Colorado Springs with his wife and two children.

Product Details

• Paperback: 210 pages
• Publisher: We Speak You Learn, LLC; First edition (July 10, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0981511805
• ISBN-13: 978-0981511801
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 9.7 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #920,512 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

David Yack is the CTO of Colorado Technology Consultants, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner based in Colorado. David is a Microsoft Regional Director and is also a Microsoft MVP for Silverlight. David has over 20 years of industry experience and embraced .NET during the final beta days of version 1.0. David is a frequent speaker at user group and industry events and is on the author team of multiple .NET related books. You can always track David down via his blog at http://blog.davidyack.com where he writes about his .NET adventures.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Silvelight Discovery Vehicle for Bus App Developer, August 22, 2009

By 

Ward R. Bell (Bay Area, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Silverlight 3 Jumpstart (Paperback)

Maybe you've heard of this Silverlight thing. There've been 2,300 new Microsoft technologies introduced this year but Silverlight seems like it might be important. You are a busy, experienced business application developer with limited time. You demand substance but there's no way you're going to wade through 800 pages of how to build custom flashy controls. You won't tolerate marketecture; you don't want the "Silverlight Programmers Bible" either.

You should snag a copy of "Silverlight 3 Jumpstart" by Microsoft MVP and Regional Director David Yack. At a slim 209 pages you can blaze through it on a roundtrip flight to Redmond just like I did. You won't learn Silverlight in depth. But you will get a soup-to-nuts view of what building a business application in Silverlight is really like.

Let me be clear about my rating. It is 5 stars because this book does EXACTLY what it sets out to do and does that well. It is not the only Silverlight book you'll ever need. You may not want it at all; if you're going deep dive directly, you might prefer something else. But if you want to discover Silverlight in a weekend, this hits the mark.

All of the essential development mechanics are there.

- How Silverlight compares to alternative client technologies (ASP, WinForms, WPF, Flash/Flex/Air)

- Development tools - got Visual Studio? not much more is absolutely required

- "Hello, Silverlight" - of course

- Hosting a Silverlight app - pretty easy stuff

- Basic screen layout with XAML and visual controls

- Data binding controls to data - because that's our bread and butter

- Debugging - about time someone talked about that

- Making it look decent with styling - think CSS

- SketchFlow intro - executable sketches to win your client's confidence

- Plumbing (aka, Application Architecture) - so you don't reinvent every wheel

David is steadfast and clear about his purpose: to give you a firm grasp of what is involved in Silverlight development.

He shoves to the side everything that would get in the way. You already know it gets more complicated than "that" ... whatever "that" happens to be. "Rough road ahead" signs are sufficient for the nonce; no need for the bumpy ride right now.

When it comes to getting data into and out of your application, I'm personally thrilled to report that David devotes pages [181 - 184] to our "DevForce Silverlight" product; full disclosure: I helped him with those four pages. Nearby you can read about the other "Business Application Frameworks": CSLA, RIA Services, and roll-your-own.

Do yourself a huge favor: don't roll-your-own; I hope you see why when you look at all the challenging ground these "frameworks" cover.

The very nature of this book requires that it be early to market. It's not going to be a "timeless classic" nor is that its intention. This is one of the first ... if not the first ... Silverlight 3 books out there.

The haste shows. There are grammar and spelling mistakes. Chapter 10 was clearly intended to be Chapter 1 as it makes forward references to chapters that you've already read. That's mildly disappointing. Don't let this undermine your faith in the material; the book is accurate in all important respects relevant to your purpose: to learn what Silverlight development is like and whether it might be for you.

The book is affordably priced and an excellent value ... as long as you know why you are buying it. If your time is worth money and you're trying to get out of the blocks it will definitely save you many times the cost.

Silverlight is a tremendous business application delivery vehicle and a heck of a lot more productive than any other web technology out there. Silverlight Jumpstart will show you why.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A significant first step into new technology!, September 12, 2009

By 

Richard Schulthess "Rich Schulthess" (Atlanta, GA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Silverlight 3 Jumpstart (Paperback)

I'm a developer and one of Microsoft's biggest fans! That's because of the unmatched quality of their development tools and their absolutely unmatched support for developers. But, the frantic pace of releasing new operating systems, server products, and development tools, particularly over the last two years, is a huge challenge for us developers to digest and remain "up to speed".

Book publishers have the same problem. In an effort to be out front, publishers now routinely publish books based upon beta software. Books published based upon knowledge at this "Wet paint" stage inevitably are inaccurate when the product becomes "real". While I recognize the value of early information, I have stopped spending good money on expensive books that will become inaccurate in a matter of weeks at best.

In his book, David Yak devotes a "Timeline of Events" page to describing the frantic milestones that led to publication of this book on 7/10/2009, Silverlight 3's formal release date. I applaud his efforts to tell us about the "real" product, something that, in my view, is more ethical than his counterparts. Yes, we developers thirst for early information, but we want that information to be as accurate as possible.

This book reflects the rush to market. Typos and a great deal of bad grammar exist. But, that doesn't really matter to me! I certainly got my money's worth from the content even though an English teacher would have marked up most pages. I'm new to Silverlight and haven't leveraged WPF - yet. I needed a "Sesame Street" level of introduction to the product and the development environment before trying to implement anything. I got much more than that!

Most technical books on new technology suffer from a "can't see the forest for the trees" syndrome. They plunge into details before the reader has built any "mental mailboxes" to contain it and keep it in proper context, thus generating as many questions as it does answers. Not so with this book. It introduces the reader to the product, development tools, and suggested development strategies in an effective manner. After reading it, I know where I'm going with my project and have some well-developed ideas on just how to get there. Thanks David! You certainly delivered what you promised!

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very good as a quick "get started" with Silverlight!, October 7, 2009

By 

Laurent Duveau (Montreal, Qc) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Silverlight 3 Jumpstart (Paperback)

I really enjoyed reading this book, I like the format and the fact that it goes straight from XAML introduction to MVVM in less than 200 pages! The author don't spend too much time explaining what a Rectangle is and how you can animate it... (we don't really care, right) and focus more on features that will help you build RIA business application.

I really like the chapter on architectures presenting an overview of MVVM, Prism, CLSA, IdeaBlade and .NET RIA Services! I gives you a good starting point to learn about these new framework/pattern.

I definitely recommend this book for any .NET developer willing to quickly become up to date with Silverlight 3; in fact, as a Silverlight Trainer myself I bought several dozens to give to my students.

Note that this book is a premise of a next book focused even more on building business applications using Silverlight, so keep an eye on [...]...