Foundation Expression Blend 3 with Silverlight

By Victor Gaudioso

Book Overview

The only real tool for developing cross-platform rich Internet applications (RIAs) for that last 11 years has been Flash; until now Silverlight 3 allows you to develop cross-platform rich Internet applications in a fraction of the time because of the extensive and very powerful .NET 3.5 libraries, the powerful, design friendly Blend 3 IDE, and an enhanced workflow that allows designers and developers to work on the same set of files at the same time.

Develop stunning RIAs in a short time. Learn some basic object-oriented programming principles. Get familiar with the Blend 3 development environment.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1430219505
• ISBN13: 9781430219507
• Release Date: June 2009
• Publisher: Apress
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 1.37 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 7.5" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Gets to the point with lots of step-by-step pictures

This book is a very fast read. The author includes a LOT of pictures and shows you how to create some really great projects. The high point is where he walks you though creating a video player that uses "glassy orbs" for the main interface. His writing style is "look over my shoulder as I walk you through creating this example in real time". This makes it easy to follow and understand. I have used earlier version of Expression Blend, but I never knew the "secrets" like how to make a ball appear as if a light is shining on it. I would not have been able to figure out things like that without the book. The book covers advanced subjects like MVVM but is definitely suitable for complete beginners. The book also covers SketchFlow in a nice tight chapter that also shows you how to use the Visual State Manager (not an easy topic to cover but very important when using SketchFlow).

Great starting point for using Expression Blend 3 with Silverlight

I would highly recommend this book to people out there that don't really have any prior knowlegde in WPF/SilverLight. I am a Web Designer with little to no knowledge of C# but this book gets you up and running fast. It gives you a good overview of Expression Blend 3 and how to use all the tools to start creating a RIA (Rich Internet Application). Victor Gaudioso does a great job of explaining what he is doing and why he is doing it. He has also gone above and beyond as a resource for not just the book but with any SilverLight questions I have had so far. I have emailed him numerous times with questions about the information in the book and with personal project questions. Each time he has responded immediately with great answers to my questions. He also maintains an ongoing blog with video tutorials based on questions he gets from his readers. Buy this book if you are looking to get into SilverLight so Victor Gaudioso can continuing to do this in the future.

Perfect introduction to Silverlight 3 Using Expression

Silverlight 3 manifests a number of enhancements over the previous 2 versions of Microsoft's Silverlight RIA Platform. I made the mistake of foregoing Silverlight V1 & 2 because of quite a few quirky, but deal-breaking, development issues when I first tried them. Therefore, I was quite a bit behind the curve on all things Silverlight when Expression Studio 3 and S3 were released. Being an ASP.NET developer for the better part of a decade, I rarely encounter anything that has me lost as I was with Silverlight Development. Enter "Foundation Expression Blend 3 with Silverlight" by Victor Gaudioso. I was totally blow away, but in less than 15 minutes I had a working Silverlight Application running. It is really nice how the author actually EXPLAINS the development UI which is a bit different than the Visual Studio.NET UI. He goes over the controls in the interface and how to use them which is something other technical books often leave out. He even goes over the interoperability of Expression Studio 3 and Visual Studio which is nice for ASP.NET and even other developers familiar with C#. Once familiarity is established, the author leads the reader through examples and even deep dives into code and some fairly advanced, but common, development techniques. One is ultimately left with the a very good understanding of Silverlight development using Expression blend through useful, real world examples with amazing illustrations of what is going on.

I'm enjoyng this book

I'm enjoying this book. Blend is so complex. The user interface is so complex, so different from what I'm used to (say Office, VS) with all those tiny clues that my eye tends to ignore, only to find out later that they open to additional levels of complexity. Not to mention the dark colors - you have a dark theme and a darker one! I'm sure MS usability experts research this thoroughly, but maybe they did not plan for older programmers trying to see what's all this is about... So, facing such a product, I do feel this book is helping me. I'm currently in chapter 2, and it's a relief. Previously I tried to study the product using the video clips at "Learn Expression Blend" but that was too tough. This book does not have the depth of the encyclopedia like "unleashed" books but, for my current needs - to understand how to operate this piece of dark and complex GUI - this book is exactly what I need!

Great Kick Start to Blend/Silverlight

As an officer in the Roanoke Valley .Net Users Group, I have seen several presentations on Silverlight over the past several months. My interest in Silverlight was very strong. However, every time I sat down to experiment with Silverlight & Blend I never got past square one. Last month, I Came across Foundation Expression Blend 3 with Silverlight by Victor Gaudioso and immediately bought the book. Within minutes, I had working examples from the book up and running. This book is great for getting started and understanding the big picture. There is a considerable learning curve to understanding the Blend and Visual Studio integration. Victor's book explains this integration and so much more. If you accurately follow Victor's examples, you will learn many valuable Silverlight development fundamentals. By learning these essential concepts I am on my way to building more robust Web and WPF applications.