Microsoft Silverlight Books

Full Color

Code samples appear as they do in Visual Studio and Expression Blend!

 

Printed entirely in color, with helpful figures and syntax coloring to make code samples appear as they do in Visual Studio and Expression Blend!

 

Silverlight is a lightweight but powerful plug-in for multiple web browsers on multiple operating systems that makes it easier than ever to create rich web-based content, applications, and controls. With support for vector graphics, animations, full-screen high-definition video, and more, Silverlight gives you the ability to create more compelling content than you dreamed possible for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. Silverlight provides much of the power of Windows Presentation Foundation, but with less overhead and easy integration with HTML and AJAX-style applications. Silverlight 1.0 Unleashed is the authoritative book that covers the technology in a practical and approachable fashion, authored by Silverlight guru and Microsoft developer Adam Nathan.

Covers everything you need to know about Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) in Silverlight

• Examines the Silverlight feature areas in depth: graphics, text, audio, video, animation, ink, events, and more
• Demonstrates how to create reusable controls and perform common tasks (such as drag-and-drop) using basic building blocks
• Explains how to download assets asynchronously to maximize your user experience
• Demonstrates how to create hybrid applications that mix Silverlight content with HTML or Flash content
• Highlights features scheduled for future versions of Silverlight while showing how to achieve your desired results with the current version

Part I Fundamentals 

XAML

Part II Creating Static Content

Shapes, Lines, and Curves

Text

Brushes and Images

Positioning and Transforming Elements

Part III Making Your Content Come to Life

Responding to Input Events

Downloading Content on Demand

Animation

Audio and Video

Very good book, better than Wrox

I bought this book after Silverlight 1.0 from Wrox, and from a brief topic-by-topic comparison, Silverlight Unleashed is simply better. The Wrox book was a very good introduction, but it did not offer much beyond that. Silverlight Unleashed has more useful code samples (and they are also in full color, like the Wrox counterpart), and what I found most helpful was the series of "Tip" sections along the way to shed light on Silverlight's "gottchas". They gave good hints on what will probably be defined as Silverlight best practices in the future. Topic-wise, the most notable difference between the two books was chapter eight on downloading content. Silverlight Unleashed had much more helpful explanations. The Wrox book did, however, have a better introduction to Silverlight from a theoretical point of view. If you deal with Silverlight in a non-developer role (account/sales manager, business analyst, etc.), go with the Wrox book. That seemed to more plainly explain its features, integration with other platforms/tool sets, and how to sell others on Silverlight. But if you are in a developer role, this book will be more immediately useful.

.NET Code Monkey
31 October, 2007

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The best book on the subject

As a person who has read all the official documentation cover to cover and other Silverlight books cover to cover I can say that this is the best book on the subject. Even though I had already read over 500 pages on the subject I was still able to find over a hundred things that I had not encountered anywhere else. One example is animation. He explains how you can set animated "to" in Javascript and you don't need a "from". A animation problem that previously had me stuck for a week was solved with 10 lines of code. The examples are small and easy to follow. The coding is first rate. The "side bars" all contain priceless information. There is no fluff, if he wrote it down it's important. He also has all the code from the book online (http://www.adamnathan.net/silverlight/code/) where you can alter the examples in your web browser and see the results. I also read his Windows Presentation Foundation Unleashed (WPF) (Unleashed) and that is the best book on that subject so it is not surprising that he was able to nail this one perfectly.

M. Washington
09 December, 2007

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Wait until 2.0

I bought this hoping to learn SL. It only contains information on 1.0 which is very buggy. Granted that the author points out all these issues, but after reading the first few chapters it became apparent that even SL 1.1 is probably significantly improved. I didn't think it was worth the time to learn all the tricks to get around 1.0 issues. The author even states that when 1.0 was released, 1.1 was already in beta. I returned and decided to wait until SL 2.0, which should be in April 2008 or so.

Paul
14 January, 2008