Microsoft Silverlight Books

Silverlight 2 Programmers Reference introduces developers to the second release of Microsoft’s Silverlight platform, showing them how to create powerful Rich Interactive Applications (RIAs).  The book focuses not only on the capabilities provided by the Silverlight 2 platform, but introduce them to the languages, tools and techniques used to build applications on the platform.  

This book will consist of an introductory-level tutorial followed by reference material.   The tutorial itself consists of 4 parts.  Part 1 introduces the developer to the Silverlight platform.  In addition, it covers the basics of  XAML, Silverlight 2's CoreCLR and the data and communications frameworks, and Silverlight developer tools like Expression Blend. 

Part 2 dives into the specific capabilities of the Silverlight 2 platform, showing readers how to use controls, work with text, lay out views, style applications, use graphics and visuals, work with audio and video capabilities, and use services for communications, data, download, and install.   Each chapter provides a mini-tutorial on each topic, with cross-refernces to supporting reference material that can be found in the appendixes. 

 Part 3 shows the reader how to tie together the building blocks described in Part 2 to create holistic Silverlight applications.  Upon completion of this part of the book, the reader will have a thorough understanding of how Silverlight applications are architected, developed and designed.

Part 4 covers the real-world problems readers may face in building their applications.  It reviews several real-world samples designed to not only educate the reader, but also to inspire, and finishes with a walk-through of a complete, working application.