- Animation
- Application design
- ASP.NET
- C#, .NET 3.5
- Controls
- Data access
- Effects
- Expression Blend
- Expression Design
- Game development
- Graphics
- Javascript and AJAX
- Math and Physics
- Media streaming
- Multimedia
- Security
- Silverlight
- Styling
- UI Design
- VB.NET
- Video
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- WPF
- XAML
BlueForest Networks
Pro WPF in C# 2008: Windows Presentation Foundation with .NET 3.5, Second Edition
Publisher: Apress - February 25, 2008 ISBN-10: 1590599551, ISBN-13: 9781590599556
Author: Matthew MacDonald
1040 pages
Pro WPF in C# 2008: Windows Presentation Foundation with .NET 3.5, Second Edition - book reviews: 39
The Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation provides the foundation for building applications and high–quality user experiences in Windows Vista. WPF blends application user interface, documents, and media content to provide richer control, design, and development of the visual aspects of Windows programs.
Author Matthew MacDonald shows you how WPF really works. His no–nonsense, practical advice will get you building high–quality WPF applications quickly and easily. MacDonald will take you through a thorough investigation of the more advanced aspects of WPF, and its relation to other elements of the WinFX stack and the .NET Framework 3.5, to complete your understanding of WPF and C# 2008.
WPFs functionality extends to support for Tablet PCs and other forms of input device, and provides a more modern imaging and printing pipeline, accessibility and UI automation infrastructure, data–driven UI and visualization, as well as the integration points for weaving the application experience into the Windows shell.
What you’ll learn
- WPF basics: XAML, layout, control essentials, and data flow
- WPF applications: Navigation, commands, localization, and deployment
- Advanced controls: Custom controls, menus, toolbars, and trees
- WPF documents: Text layout, printing, and document packaging
- Graphics and multimedia: Drawing shapes, sound and video, animation, geometric transformations, and imaging
Who is this book for?
Developers encountering WPF and .NET 3.5 for the first time in their professional lives
About the Apress Pro Series
The Apress Pro series books are practical, professional tutorials to keep you on and moving up the professional ladder.
You have gotten the job, now you need to hone your skills in these tough competitive times. The Apress Pro series expands your skills and expertise in exactly the areas you need. Master the content of a Pro book, and you will always be able to get the job done in a professional development project. Written by experts in their field, Pro series books from Apress give you the hard–won solutions to problems you will face in your professional programming career.
A thorough examination of the WPF 3.5 technology
This book is a thorough examination of the WPF 3.5 technology - its architecture, what you can do with it, and how to do it. It is directed at professional C# developers.
The book is written in a systematic, comprehensible way. A chapter starts with a basic introduction and includes graphics of the respective WPF sub-class hierarchy. The chapter's subject is then steadily explored in more and more detail. For instance, at the beginning, there are five pages just on resolution independence. XAML is explained in-depth, starting with the four ways of loading and compiling: Code-only, code and uncompiled XAML, code and compiled XAML, and XAML only; this is followed by the specifics of the XAML grammar (markup extensions, attached properties, etc.). There are seven pages on non-rectangular windows and sixteen pages on playing sound on different OS versions. As the book goes on, the author really shines in describing complex subjects, such as 3-D drawing, in a logically understandable way. Towards the end, there is a tabular overview of features missing in WPF compared to Windows Forms, with recommendations on when to choose one over the other, or both of them together, and how to mix them best.
The volume also contains lots of small, but precious pieces of surplus information, such as: Properties of WPF controls can be set in any order, without causing any change in behavior; or: By using an overloaded version of DependencyObject.SetValue in code, you can attach a value for any dependency property, even if it is not defined as an attached property (which is not possible in XAML). In addition, the author mentions various quirks of WPF, and how to get around them, if possible. Example: When you restart an animation that is almost complete, and the animation had the current position as the starting point, the animation will appear to slow down. Another example: Windows Vista always requires permission elevation for a setup, even though, in the case of Click Once, this makes no sense. As a consequence, a Click Once WPF application, on Vista, cannot be installed under a regular user account; the user is forced to install it under an admin account - which defeats the purpose of using Click Once in the first place...
Developers are all-too-familiar with the Pareto principle: 80% of the tasks of a project can be solved easily" in 20% of the time, but solving the other 20% takes at least 80% of the time. If you want to use WPF in a productive way, I strongly recommend taking the time to study this book. Admittedly, at 1040 pages, this is quite some endeavor. However, you will be rewarded many times over, as you will be saved a lot of frustration and unexpected delays, when you already know from the beginning how to solve much of the other 20%.
Marc Sigrist
28 February, 2010
Prompt and good value
I tried to buy this product locally, not only was the price high, but delivery would have taken up to four weeks. For a major capital city, this was unacceptable. I have no guilt about buying this book from Amazon - half the price and arrived within a week. Brilliant.
Gregg Helleren
14 July, 2010
Thorough introduction to WPF
Pro WPF provides a comprehensive overview of WPF technologies. It covers most topics that a programmer may need to know to use WPF for creating applications.
The chapters on available controls, on styles, control templates, pages , layout, styles and triggers and on data binding were useful to me professionally.
The chapter on dependency properties and routed events is a must read to understand how WPF is meant to be used.
The data binding chapters are good but could do with more detail. The chapter on multithreading could use more detail too.
Overall this book seems better than another WPF book I have read(unleashed).
Tanveer Ansari
06 February, 2010
Best WPF book out there so far...
I purchased many of the WPF books out there for myself and my team. This book has become my new favorite (with Chris Sells WPF book coming in second - sorry Chris!). The book goes into more details about why things work the way they do instead of just saying this is how it should be done. Books that provide deep understanding of a topic are hard to find in today's mantra of pushing low budget tech books out the door for copy and paste code examples. The author finds just the right balance of code, pictures and words. With this book you get 800 pages of information and not 800 pages of code examples printed page after page after page.
Todd
08 November, 2009
Good book
This book presents the subject well and I recommend it to the other programmers who want to learn about this subject.
Ricardo Sanchez
02 November, 2009
