Programming WPF

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Editorial Reviews

Product Description

If you want to build applications that take full advantage of Windows Vista's new user interface capabilities, you need to learn Microsoft's Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). This new edition, fully updated for the official release of .NET 3.0, is designed to get you up to speed on this technology quickly. By page 2, you'll be writing a simple WPF application. By the end of Chapter 1, you'll have taken a complete tour of WPF and its major elements.

WPF is the new presentation framework for Windows Vista that also works with Windows XP. It's a cornucopia of new technologies, which includes a new graphics engine that supports 3-D graphics, animation, and more; an XML-based markup language, called XAML, for declaring the structure of your Windows UI; and a radical new model for controls.

This second edition includes new chapters on printing, XPS, 3-D, navigation, text and documents, along with a new appendix that covers Microsoft's new WPF/E platform for delivering richer UI through standard web browsers -- much like Adobe Flash. Content from the first edition has been significantly expanded and modified. Programming WPF includes:

• Scores of C# and XAML examples that show you what it takes to get a WPF application up and running, from a simple "Hello, Avalon" program to a tic-tac-toe game
• Insightful discussions of the powerful new programming styles that WPF brings to Windows development, especially its new model for controls
• A color insert to better illustrate WPF support for 3-D, color, and other graphics effects
• A tutorial on XAML, the new HTML-like markup language for declaring Windows UI
• An explanation and comparison of the features that support interoperability with Windows Forms and other Windows legacy applications

WPF represents the best of the control-based Windows world and the content-based web world. Programming WPF helps you bring it all together.

About the Author

Chris Sells is a content strategist on the Microsoft MSDN content team. Previously, he was the director of software engineering at DevelopMentor. Chris is the author of "Windows Telephony Programming" (Addison-Wesley, 1998) and "Windows Forms Programming in Visual Basic .NET" (Addison-Wesley, 2004), and coauthor of "Effective COM" (Addison-Wesley, 1999), "ATL Internals" (Addison-Wesley, 1999), and "Essential .NET, Volume 1" (Addison-Wesley, 2003).
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Edited by Nicola White, Acting Head of Department, Central St Martins College and Ian Griffiths, Professor of Fashion and Visiting Lecturer, Kingston University, Design Consultant MaxMara.

Product Details

• Paperback: 864 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 2 edition (August 28, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596510373
• ISBN-13: 978-0596510374
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (60 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #36,373 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

45 of 58 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Very Out Of Date, April 27, 2006

By	Jason Jackson "Jason Jackson" (Austin, TX United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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This review is from: Programming Windows Presentation Foundation (Paperback)

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.

18 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Learn To Use WPF & XAML, October 21, 2005

By	Daniel McKinnon (Tewksbury, MA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Programming Windows Presentation Foundation (Paperback)

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

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ignore the 2 and 3 star reviews, April 25, 2008

By	Jason Goemaat (Des Moines, IA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.