Customer Reviews

WPF in Action with Visual Studio 2008

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

According to the authors, their goal for this book is to not only teach developers how to use WPF, but more importantly, how to use it well and properly. For this reason, they offer a lot of their opinions about what they think are great and not so great about WPF as of the 3.5 SP1 Release, in comparison to Windows Forms, for example. Also, instead of just showing you the steps involved in, say, creating data bindings or animation effects, they show you how to go one or two steps further to create architecturally resilient frameworks that support easier swapping of animation effects or data access components. Divided into four parts, the book begins with a three chapter introduction that includes a historical discussion of how WPF is so different from previous UI Technology offerings from Microsoft. Part 2, consisting of Chapters 4 through 8, gets readers involved in building a calculator application and, through that process, teaches readers about controls, layouts, dependency and attached properties, events, styling and resource management. Part 3, consisting of Chapters 9 through 15, tackles data binding, graphics, and custom controls. The two lengthy chapters on data binding (Chapters 11 and 12) are, in my opinion, the best chapters in the book, covering rarely discussed topics such as MultiBindings, Priority Bindings, and current gotchas when working with results collections from LINQ queries and potential workarounds. Finally, Part 4 consists of one or two chapters each on XBAP, Printing, and Threading etc. Despite its heftiness, the book does not provide comprehensive coverage of WPF concepts; instead, the authors have carefully chosen the topics they wanted to concentrate on (for example, they provide simplified explanations of how attached and dependency properties work, choosing not to elaborate on the runtime complexities involved behind the scene). Also, the authors may be opinionated, but their rather folksy writing style makes the book an easy read.

I concider this book a "must read" for anybody working with WPF. While I now have 6 books specifically on WPF, I find this one to offer a fresh look at a variety of topics, and their examples well documented and easier to work with than other books.
This could not be your only book on WPF, as I do not concider this a reference book, but more of a collection of well written tutorials. In that, not all areas of WPF are covered. As an example, unless its buried inside of a topic I have not looked at yet, there is no explaination of drag and drop.

Of the topics they do hit, you can expect that you will gain perspective into these areas that you did not have before. I personally found their treatment of custom controls to significantly further my understanding of how to architect my own.
The author's style of writting is "kind'a back-woods", which I feel they pulled off well. This style typically scares me, but I must admit that I found my stamina for forging ahead seems higher when I'm "cozied up" to this book.

Last word, if you have to have only two books on WPF, get a big fat one with lots of reference such as "Pro WPF in C# 2008", but make this your second book... the one that going to provide you with good experiments and insight into some core topics.

I admire the way WPF has been presented in this book. Arlen Feldman and Maxx Daymon have done a masterful job.

The two extremes of technology books are the densely-typed reference works that make your eyes tear over and the happy-chatty books that try too hard to convince you that you are having a good time. WPF in Action steers carefully between these extremes by providing a deep understanding of the WPF technology through what are basically step-by-step tutorials that build upon each other.

WPF is a mind-bending technology that seems to defy many of the rules we are used to in the WinForm and WebForm world. This means that understanding it can only come through actual hands on coding. WPF in Action facilitates this process and leads us through the mind-set change required to truly grasp WPF.

This is an excellent work, especially when complemented with something like Matthew MacDonald's Pro WPF in C#, which is much longer on the details but shorter on practicums.

While not the most in-depth book on WPF, this book covers every major feature in WPF. The authors know their audience - developers. Developers want to see a lot of code, and that's what you get in this book; a lot of code and a lot of examples. After going through this book cover to cover (which is rare for me and computer books) I had a very solid foundation on WPF to build upon.

If you're new to WPF this is your starting point.

The book is written on very clear and easy to read language. The book contains many detailed samples. I found answers on many my problems. This book must be in your WPF-book library.

I just finished reading this gem today and I was so impressed that I felt compelled to write a review.
Coming from a winforms background, I did my homework going through online articles, tutorials and the likes. In addition, I tend to "consume" books like yesterday's newspapers. This book is my 5th book on the subject and honestly not any of the other books (including the more recent ones for VS2010) comes close to the clarity of explanation and enjoyment of reading that you get from this book.

Although the hummer sometimes tends to be childish (and other time really hilarious), you can't help but admire how the authors incorporate their opinion and experience (which I find as useful as the material in the book).
My favorite chapters that nowhere else you would find the same level of quality explanation are:
= the two chapters on binding
= the two chapters on layouts
= the two chapters on User Controls and Custom Controls
Each of the above is alone is worth the price of the book. The book's "in action" style truly helps put forward the true philosophy of WPF compared to other books and articles that explain features through code snippet or useless apps.

English is not my native language and I found the book very clear and approachable so I totally disagree with the reviews downplaying the writing style of the book.
Things I did feel the book came short where the negligible coverage of MVVM pattern, the few spelling/grammar mistakes in the text and the fact that both authors seem not to have an active blog (would love to read anything coming from either of them).

Bottom line, this book is a one-stop shop to learn WPF and truly enjoy it during the process. Well done Manning, this is a true quality book.

This book is a good start, but the layout and style of writing
is not the best. There are not too many wpf books out there
but this still is better than nothing

Perhaps I've been spoiled by the Adam Nathan book. Regardless, this book just doesn't seem good to me. If you're willing to barter strong foundational knowledge for pretty effects and gradient brushes then this may be the book for you. If not, then this is the wrong book. The authors do have a conversational tone with plenty of opinions, which is not necessarily a bad thing. The trouble is, you expect a book with opinions to go beyond what seemed to be somewhere between marketing hype and childish enthusiasm. The tone is sort of like, "You can do this, ... and uh look!, you can also do this neat little trick. Ohhh, but that feature is something to watch out for.". Add to that the standard hype and you have "WPF IN ACTION".

I gave it 2 stars only because there is a slight possibility that I was spoiled by the Nathan book. Had I not read that book first, perhaps I would think differently. Things have changed since the Nathan book and it is a bit out of date and there are less of those who want to learn purely WPF without silverlight thrown in. However, I think that book provided very well written foundational knowledge and this book seems to try to compete very poorly in the same domain.

Hastily written and poorly edited computer books have become all too common in the last decade or two. This book started out as a refreshing exception, but the authors appear to have run out of time or patience about halfway through the book.

After several requests from users on their online forum they did post the source code on their website, however the code you'll get by following along in the book varies considerably from this.

I really wanted to like this book, there aren't a lot of other titles available for this relatively new topic, but I've spent too many frustrating hours trying to follow the book from the middle chapters on and getting the code to work. ( As other users on their forum pointed out, when you're trying to learn a new subject the step-by-step approach is better than simply copying and pasting code.)

I got this book based on the reviews but after getting to Chapter 11 (Data Binding with WPF) the authors completely lost me with their style of writing. The main reason i got the book was to learn not to copy or run their code. Am sure they are both smart guys but they both seem to get lost sometimes trying to explain the concept; my guess is that this has to do with trying to impress that they know so much.
This is the worse "In Action" book i have read to far.