Pro Silverlight 2 in C# 2008

by Matthew MacDonald

Book Overview

Microsoft Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in like Flash that delivers rich interactive applications for the Web. Silverlight offers a flexible programming model that supports a number of different programming languages and techniques (making it cross-platform) and all major browsers (cross-browser support). There is lots of interest in Microsoft's Flash killer and several conferences have seen heavy support for the tech.

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• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1590599497
• ISBN13: 9781590599495
• Release Date: December 2008
• Publisher: Apress
• Length: 608 Pages
• Weight: 2.59 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.6" x 7.0" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Great book! Must Read!

I read Matthew McDonald's book Pro WPF to bone up on WPF, XAML, and everything .NET 3.5 has to offer. I have to say that I was impressed by Matthew's writing style, level of detail, and general knowledge that he passed onto the reader. This fact is also the case with Pro Silverlight 2. While WPF has some similarities to Silverlight, the author points out some of the differences (like the lack for EventTrigger support for any event but the Loaded event in the current version). The book covers all of the major topics, starting with an overview of the basic elements: XAML elements, properties (simple and attached), moving into the subjects of Layout containers, dependency properties, and routed events. He then moves into an overview of the various controls. This overview isn't exhaustive, but gives you a firm foundation. I thought his chapters on shapes, brushes, transforms, audio/video, and animation to be very helpful. It can be difficult to understand how to setup these various features, and Pro Silverlight 2 clarifies it well. The next section of the book covers the more advanced topics that you would need to know to use Silverlight, such as using web services within ASP.NET/silverlight (a useful topic since Silverlight doesn't use ViewState or server-side technologies because it's running on the client), databinding (which can be challenging due to various levels of nested Silverlight structures), multithreading, and more. He really doesn't leave very many stones unturned in his explanation of the features. I would highly recommend this book from Apress. Although Silverlight 3 is coming soon, this book will help you understand those fundamentals that will be in the next version.

In depth coverage

I feel very confident about my Silverlight skills now, I bought this one in conjunction with the "Silverlight 2 for ASP.NET developers" and was the best decision ever. I was looking for a book that covers the core technology and other one that explains me how to integrate it on my current ASP.NET skills and I feel that I am on the right track. This book really takes you to the core of Silverlight, for me is essential to understand how everything works in order to learn a new technology and this book hasn't failed me. One note, you need to know C# quite well as it assumes a lot of core knowledge (this is a recommendation for junior devs only). If you are a skilled developer and wants to know about the technology this is the way forward. Really nice!

What a great book!

I own several books written by this author and enjoy each one of them. Most authors have great knowledge about topics they are writing about. Not that many have good ability to explain what they know. Mathew has a great talent of explaining things without going overboard, but still noticing all little "gotchas" that can make your life miserable. I bought this book among several others after long time of working with Silverlight using Web as information source. This book is way above the rest of them. Despite being familiar with most of the material, I still enjoyed the book very much and picked thing or two that I was not aware of. The layout is great, the pace is good, there are tons of illustrations and having text printed in color makes it a breeze to go through code samples - you feel like you are in a Visual Studio - your brain will automatically digest the code - with comments, attributes, qualifiers, etc.

Best out there to this date

I have had an opportunity to read a number of Silverlight 2 books that have come out on the market in the last few months. However this one is by far the best book on the subject going into depth on topics and covering ground that was completely ignored by other books. It is easy to read and I have already learned a number of things that I could make work at first but didn't know exactly what was happening under the covers. Highly recommend this book to anyone planning to learn more about silverlight 2.

The most exhaustive and accurate coverage on the Subject

This book is very well organized and covers the essential silverlight subjects in depth. The color content makes a big difference for the ease of reading. The most extensive coverage of Silverlight capabilities from controls, animation, networking, databinding, isolated storage, multithreading and more... This book contains all you need to develop full featured applications in Silverlight. It is the best book I have read on Silverlight 2 (and I've read 4 so far). Simple, I made it the recommended textbook for the silverlight class I am teaching at UCSD this winter.