WPF Control Development Unleashed: Building Advanced User Experiences [Paperback]

Pavan Podila (Author), Kevin Scott Hoffman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 21, 2009 | ISBN-10: 0672330334 | ISBN-13: 978-0672330339 | Edition: 1

WPF Control Development Unleashed

Building Advanced User Experiences

 

In this book, two leading Windows Presentation Foundation experts give developers everything they need to build next-generation WPF applications–software that is more robust, usable, and compelling.

 

Drawing on their close ties with Microsoft’s WPF development team, Pavan Podila and Kevin Hoffman give you a clear, robust, and practical understanding of WPF, its underpinnings, its overall architecture, and its design philosophy. Podila and Hoffman introduce never-before-published WPF design patterns and support them with robust, real-world code examples–all presented in full color, just as they appear in Visual Studio.

 

The authors begin by explaining how to “think in WPF,” and then introduce powerful new techniques for everything from handling 3D layouts to creating game-like physics effects. Along the way, they offer in-depth coverage of data binding, building interactivity, and control development: three of WPF’s most challenging concepts. You’ll learn how to choose the right WPF features for every programming challenge, and use those features far more creatively and effectively.

 

If you want to build truly outstanding WPF applications, this is the book that will get you there.

 

• Master the patterns and techniques you need to build state-of-the-art WPF applications
• Write more powerful and effective applications that reflect a deep understanding of WPF’s design philosophy
• Learn how WPF has evolved, and take full advantage of its growing sophistication
• Make the most of advanced declarative programming techniques
• Leverage IScrollInfo, virtualization, control theming, and other complex features
• Build more powerful interactivity into your WPF applications
• Create more visual software with 3D elements, custom animations, and shader effects
• Optimize WPF application performance in real-world environments
• Master design patterns for organizing your controls more effectively

 

Category: .NET Programming / WPF

Covers: Windows Presentation Foundation

User Level: Intermediate—Advanced

 

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Pavan Podila, Architect at NYC’s Liquidnet Holdings, has worked extensively with many leading UI technologies, including WPF/Silverlight, Flash/Flex/AIR, and DHTML. In the past, he has worked with Java Swing, Eclipse SWT, and TrollTech/Nokia Qt. His primary interests include 2D/3D graphics, data visualization, UI architecture, and computational art. He created FluidKit (http://fluidkit.codeplex.com), an open-source WPF library of controls such as ElementFlow, TransitionPresenter, etc. He is a Microsoft MVP for Client App Dev and blogs actively at http://blog.pixelingene.com.

 

Kevin Hoffman got his first computer, a Commodore VIC-20, when he was 10 years old and has been hopelessly addicted to programming ever since. He has written desktop applications, web applications, distributed enterprise applications, VoIP software, and pretty much everything else in between. He is currently a .NET Architect in New England building large-scale, next-generation web applications.

 

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Sams Publishing; 1 edition (September 21, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0672330334
• ISBN-13: 978-0672330339
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 0.8 x 9.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #554,476 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I have always been passionate about programming User Interfaces and Visualizations. I am a visual person and anything graphically appealing always has my undivided attention! Even better if I am involved in building it.

I have a CS background in Image Processing and Compilers.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Much Needed Book on Building WPF Controls January 6, 2010

By Joshua Adams

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I've been writing apps for business and pleasure in WPF for 2.5 years now. I own every significant book on WPF that is out there. Most are quite good, and can do a nice job showing Joe Developer how to build an app in WPF by teaching about the out-of-the-box controls, basic data binding, validation, DataTemplates, ControlTemplates, Styles, Triggers, etc. That sort of book can get you building an app that looks very nice and leaves its WinForms battleship gray apps in the dust.

However, actually building custom controls in WPF is a topic that is barely glanced upon in most of those books. Furthermore, there simply wasn't much information specifically on the topic of building your own WPF controls on MSDN. The best sources where blogs such as Josh Smith, Dr WPF, and Pavan Podila (one of the authors). But a book that systematically covered the topic was a void that has been very nicely filled by WPF Control Development Unleashed. This is great because well-done custom controls can really increase the "sizzle" of an app and make it enjoyable to use.

As others have written, this book isn't for someone who is just learning WPF. It is for some advanced developers who are building their own WPF controls. On the first page the authors explain that they are going to teach the "whys" of WPF so that compelling apps can be built, and that they are also maintainable and can stand the test of time because they are built in accordance with the WPF design philosophy. I think the book does a great job of achieving that goal.

One of the biggest strengths of the book is that it spends time showing when NOT to build a custom WPF control in favor of re-templating existing controls.... They creatively give a number of examples of this, including using a WPF ListBox to actually display an animated radar screen! Re-purposing existing controls through their ControlTemplates should always be explored before actually building a new custom WPF Control. They also cover the WPF class hierarchy and explain that when building a custom WPF control it is very important to subclass from the correct WPF class.

My favorite chapters were "Building Custom Panels", "Using Existing Controls", "Advanced Scrolling", "Virtualization", "Custom Animations", "Events, Commands, and Focus", and "Advanced Data Binding". These chapters delve into the plumbing of WPF in ways other books don't. Unless you are a WPF rockstar you will learn lots of new things about these topics. Maybe you'll learn about the levels of data binding precedence, or how you can receive change notification for dependency properties that a control doesn't provide an event for, new ways to use Attached Properties--or maybe just some guidelines over when to use Commands or RoutedEvents. You will learn something you didn't know before, even about WPF topics you have used extensively.

Is this book perfect? No, of course not. It simply cannot cover everything about WPF in full detail. For instance, you will find some discussion of WPF design patterns (MVVM, etc) but as these are not the main focus of the book there wasn't room to cover them (and all their flavors). In fact I really think there would be room for a book entirely devoted to WPF flavors of UI design patterns. Despite a few minor shortcomings along these lines, I feel this book merits 5 stars.

The authors' examples of custom WPF controls and re-templated existing WPF controls are fantastic and all the code can be downloaded for free. In fact, if you just read the book and don't look at the code you are really missing out. Just using some of these controls really got some of my own creative juices flowing.

To end, here is what I (@adajos) tweeted about this book:

"The 5 most useful tips I found in WPF Control Development Unleashed. 1. Use AddOwner Instead of Creating a New DependencyProperty #WPF

2. Listen for PropertyChanged events on Dependency Properties with DependencyPropertyDescriptor's AddValueChanged() #WPF

3. How/when to do a Weak Event Pattern with IWeakEventListener and subclassing WeakEventManager. #WPF

4. The entire chapter on Virtualization in #WPF

5. Implementing Drag and Drop with Attached Properties. #WPF

Those were my 5 favorite tips from WPF Control Development Unleashed, but it was chock full of great content. Highly recommended. #WPF" Read more ›

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Covers the most powerful functionality WPF has to offer September 29, 2009

By T. Anderson TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

WPF is a vast topic. This book does a great job of zeroing in on some of the most powerful functionality WPF has to offer and assembling it in a very concise format.

The book starts out covering the WPF Design Philosophy which is a great for those who need an introduction to the overall context WPF offers the developer. I would recommend reading only to those who have some experience with WPF. This become evident right away. Chapter 2 `The Diverse Visual Class Structure' does a great job of covering all the most important classes in WPF, and it fits them together like a puzzle providing a complete view of the WPF, but I can see the beginner being completely overwhelmed and lost throughout the chapter. This is not a ding to the book, it warns the book is for intermediate to advanced WPF programmers.

The book continues to dig into some of the most advanced features WPF has to offer. The only thing about the book I would change is providing more printed code. The authors say they believe in only printing the most relevant code, which is fine, just not my personal preference. I like to be able to read a book without having to be on my computer to review the code. This is not a ding against the book either, since it is just a preference and the code download is great. It is very well organized and usable.

Beyond the chapters on building controls with WPF the authors also offer guidance on achieving high performing code and the use of performance measuring tools. It is a short chapter but it gets you started.

They also have a chapter of design tips. This chapter is not just WPF centric. The chapter includes a list of the well know design patterns for GUI development. They are not covered in detail, but they have a good summary about the pattern....

The authors have a good writing style that makes the book enjoyable to read. The topics are all very cool topics and they really show off the advanced capabilities of WPF.

I highly recommend all WPF developers read this book at some point along their learning path. It is not introductory, so I would suggest having a little experience first. No matter how advanced you are in your experience level, you will learn some new things from this book. Read more ›

24 of 32 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Great book if you already know everything in it October 12, 2009

By Ross P. Wright

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

This book consistently make promises its fails to keep. Chapter after chapter starts with "in the chapter you will gain an in-depth knowledge of X" and after several pages of very high-level discussion and nearly irrelevant examples concludes with, "Now that you know all about X..." and the authors barely even grazed the topic - then alone provided you with anything you can actually use to implement the topics supposedly covered.

Case in point: Data Templates. They spent the first four chapters raving about them and talking about how they have shown you the power of them and did not provide a single explanation of how to actually use one, or where they are used. No examples or even discussions of concrete examples at all. So when I read "now we have shown you..." and they have not shown me anything at all - well, I'm done. I admit I only made it half-way before I was so disgusted I put it down and quit wasting my time. Chapter after chapter I finished wondering where was the beef?

I'm no WPF beginner, but then I'm no expert either - that is why I am reading the book, right? I am sure if you are reading this stuff already knowing everything it makes more sense - but I found myself thinking as I read about topics I already know, "Man, that is a convoluted way to describe that to someone just learning. I'm sure glad I already know it." It was positively inspiring in the sense that I began thinking if these guys can write a book this bad and get published, maybe I should take a shot at writing a book myself.

Seriously, the entire book needs a reality check - the best is when they claim to be presenting a simpler method of accomplishing some task and then proceed to unfold something grotesque.... At least other authors I have read covering WPF have the common decency to show you how to do a thing that is ugly, acknowledge that, yes, it is ugly, shrug and move on - or better yet show you a better pattern, but this book reads like Microsoft sales literature. But then who are you going to believe, the experts or your own lying eyes? I don't know how much of this is the technology and how much is the authors, but sorry, you can point at a bowl of spaghetti and call it a twelve-layer lasagna all you want; I am not buying it. Read more ›