Introducing Microsoft® Silverlight(TM) 3 (Paperback)

~ Laurence Moroney (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Get a running start with Silverlight 3 the cross-platform, cross-browser plug-in for rich interactive applications and cutting-edge media experiences. Featuring advance insights from inside the Microsoft Silverlight team this book provides practical, grounded advice, rich examples, and ready code to help inspire your next solutions. Discover how to: Create your first simple sites Build applications that run out of the browser Use XAML to render, scale, and animate graphics on-screen Work with Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio Explore core and advanced controls and build your own Exploit new graphics support 3-D effects, H.264 video, GPU acceleration Experiment with media, ink, DeepZoom, and Photosynth Access data services to build connected applications Dynamically add content using Ruby and Python Manage Silverlight applications from ASP.NET based servers Learn how to deliver DRM-protected video content

Product Details

• Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: Microsoft Press (June 17, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0735625735
• ISBN-13: 978-0735625730
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 7.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #101,392 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in this category: (What's this?)

  #60 in

  Books > Computers & Internet > Graphic Design > Website Architecture & Usability

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars REVIEWED BY: Ian Smith, CTO of Irascian Ltd, July 2, 2009

By	K. Kumar "Half my Paycheck goes to Amazon" (Chicago, IL - USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Laurence Moroney's Introducing Microsoft Silverlight 3 book, published by Microsoft Press, and already in stores despite no date for even a 'Go live' license for this technology having been announced. In its favour it does highlight the fact that it is 'Based on' a beta on the cover. This appears along with a promise that updates will be available online. Given my previous experience of such empty promises and - forgive my cynicism - the fact the author's last blog update was back in March, I'm not entirely convinced the promise is anything more than the usual empty guff designed to encourage you to part with an outrageously high asking price of 40 dollars. Like I said, I'm bitter after my WCF experiences in this area (where one author even stopped comments on his blog to avoid addressing the issue of having sold a book and downloadable code samples that never worked!)

I would argue that Introducing Silverlight 3 is not so much a book, as an extended marketing brochure for the technology, written by someone obviously so busy in his day job he just didn't have the time required to put together AND PROOF-READ/TEST an introductory book like this. It's effectively an extended marketing brochure that you're expected to pay 40 dollars for! I could, and perhaps should, forgive it such sins. After all the title and the Microsoft Press record on these things pretty much gives the game away. But when the book contains so many inconsistencies, errors and lack of anything approaching appropriate instruction for a beginner I feel it's justified as the target for a full-on rant masquerading as a blog entry! ;-)

First, I should probably justify my 'it's a marketing brochure masquerading as a book' comment. Well, here's the book explaining the new 'Code Behind' feature of Blend 3

You can also edit the code-behind with Expression Blend 3, a new feature that wasn't available in previous versions. For example, originally the text block in Figure 1-6 had no name set. You can change this to txtHello and then open the Page.xaml.cs file.

Fair enough, you might think. But where does the author explain HOW to do this? He doesn't! He moves onto some other subject in the next paragraph. The book is too much 'you can' not 'you do'. Given the fat volume's 356 page count I'd expected rather more, but with each sentence being presented as a new paragraph (I reformatted the above italicised snippet from two different paragraphs) it's not hard to see how the seemingly high page count and volume thickness has been achieved.

I could perhaps forgive the lack of real 'meat' if what little meat that was presented wasn't so obviously out-of-date - even at this early stage where we're still in beta and not all changes to the core product have been made! But any newbie is going to get totally confused by the so-called explanations that permeate this book. The author is in a permanent state of confusion about whether the default page created in the simplest application is called Page, MainPage or MainControl!

Did ANYBODY bother proof-reading this book? (that's a rhetorical question, as it's obvious within minutes of starting to read it that the answer is most definitely 'No'!)

Even the most rudimentary code block appears to have been published unchecked. You want an example don't you?! One of the first code snippets shows what gets generated for you automatically in your application. It has four lines showing the auto-generated class MainPage that works for you in a default application. Which is pretty neat given that it shows the class's constructor is called Page!

Suffice to say, if you're excited about the upcoming release of Silverlight 3 (and you should be!) then the best thing to do is wait for books based on the reality of the product to be released after the release date, not this sham of a cynical exercise in making money (or over-hyping 'free book' chapter extract giveaways at costly conferences!) by exploting the current buzz around the new technology.

- irascianwork. blogspot. com

2 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing Silverlight 3 Reference, July 20, 2009

By	Umesh Patel - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Laurence Moroney has pulled off another successful book to follow his fantastic works in "Introducing Silverlight 1.0" and "Silverlight 2".

"Introducing Silverlight 3" is a great reference for learning the newest features of Silverlight 3 Beta. The book content is easy to follow along and gives a variety of examples that help to rapidly learn Silverlight 3.

Some of the sections that I enjoyed include the SketchFlow tutorial and the DRM section. The Connected Applications chapter helped me to develop my first Silverlight application with Web Services in no time.

I highly recommend the book for training and reference purposes.