Microsoft Silverlight Books

A practical and balanced coverage of Silverlight 2

After reading through this book and applying the principles described therein I was able to develop a real world Silverlight application that behaved itself inside of IE, communicated with a WCF service in the back end, retrieved data from a SQL database, then bound that data back into the Silverlight UX. I had prior C#, SQL (cursory), and Web services experience (also cursory) but this book stitched it together for me and showed me how to make my application possible. In that regard it is a very good and practical beginner to intermediate level book for real Silverlight application development. The examples in the book are never trivial and the content is detailed and well written enough that you gain a solid understanding of the technology (not just how to cut and paste sample code). The book didn't let me down until I tried to get into more complicated tasks like rendering my own shapes/geometries and manipulating the XAML DOM in code. For that you'll need to go somewhere else for additional information. If you want to put together fairly typical line of business applications that access services and databases from rich client interfaces written in Silverlight using web based deployment this book will give you most of what you need.

Larry Marvin Wall
14 October, 2009

Detail oriented book and very well organized

This is one of the best books I have seen on Silverlight. It is written well for both new and more experienced developers. I would recommend this book to anyone that like to learn things in detail. There are many books out there that are just enough to get you started but once you get into real life situations, you'll need other references. Not with this book. I have been able to do most of the coding with this book, MSDN and reflector. Can't wait to see this book for Silverlight 3.

Paurav Patel
18 September, 2009

Best Silverlight 2 book for C# developers

This is in my point of view the best book to learn Silverlight 2 using C#. Very complete, from XAML, animations, WCF web service integration, data binding with data converters, elements, layouts, creating controls, even game creation, you name it got it all here. Good thing is that one chapter builds over the other. Most centralized using Visual Studio, Blend is not touched too deep.

I am eagerly waiting the Silverlight 3 edition. But if you need now a Silverlight 2 book to learn, this is the one. Also recommend the Blend 3 Foundation book. A great combination of books to enhance your knowledge.

Alexis Rios
07 September, 2009

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.

Brian Mains
07 July, 2009

The best Silverlight book so far

The author does an excellent job of building up knowledge piece by piece, layer up on layer. He doesn't just understand the subject matter, he really grasps how to build that knowledge up in the reader's mind in a logical, bite-size manner.

This book is definitely not for beginning programmers as it doesn't go to the early levels of handholding for novices. Apress has a beginner's book for Silverlight thatthat would be better if you're newer to development. I'm a career developer and enjoyed the quicker pace, and underlying assumption of good development practices throughout the book.

Larry Steinbecker
07 June, 2009

Excellent Material

This book is well written. The explanations are clear and the author is clearly an expert in his field. I would, however, have liked a chapter on charting.

A. H. Veldhuizen
27 April, 2009

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!

Robert Gonzales
06 April, 2009

Excellent Book

This is an excellent book for anyone interested in learning Silverlight. I read it from cover to cover and I'm glad to report that every chapter I read contained useful insights into how to make Silverlight perform the task at hand. The last three chapters of the book do feel a little rushed, as they contain several errors, but overall this is the book I would recommend to anyone who wants to learn Silverlight. Despite the book's minor errors it is has proven to be an invaluable tool, which I believe warrants the book 5 stars.

Edgar Harris
09 March, 2009

Difficult but reasonable

While it is strongly recommended that you are proficient in C#/.NET before diving into Silverlight, this book does a good job of getting you through it without making too many assumptions about your skillset. Well, you had better be a somewhat decent developer in some language, as there is no real syntax discussion here. But throughout, there are tips to using Visual Studio 2008 (an absolute must for Silverlight, btw), as well as how to work in the Microsoft BCL. While there are many things left out of this book, it seems that there is at least an introduction to everything, and Google will help you find the rest of the answers.

Aaron Lile
21 January, 2009

Quintessential Silverlight 2 Book

This is THE book to have if you are learning Silverlight. Author explains things exceptionally well and the code samples are great to assist in comprehending the subject matter.

I have a number of other books by Matthew [...] which I used as a reference, but being new to Silverlight, I am reading this one cover-to-cover and will use it as reference afterwards.

Great writing style and great coverage of the material.



Keith S. Safford
09 January, 2009

Great book on Silverlight 2

For a developer wanting to learn how to develop silverlight applications, this is the book. It has great intro to silverlight and explains everything in detail. Great examples and easy to read.

Nowisee
22 December, 2008

Matthew has hit the mark again!!!

Matthew has hit the mark again!!! This is a great resource for any level of Silverlight experience. He starts out with an introduction that covers the Visual Studio Silverlight environment. The introduction really helps those who have no experience get rolling right away.

Matthew does a great job of covering every feature of Silverlight in great detail, but more importantly he covers every feature left out of Silverlight in detail. He covers the limitations and also how to get the most get the most out of what is there to make up the difference. His chapter on data binding does a great job of pushing the features that are included to there limit, which helps make up for the lack of ADO.NET and a lot of other missing binding features.

He covers every out of the box element in detail and includes a nice reference for where the element can be found in the book. He also covers styles and templates, brushes and transforms, shapes and geometries, animation, and layout containers.

The book also covers networking, multithreading, isolated storage, browser integration, media and deep zoom, wcf services, the application model, and dependency properties and routed events.

The book is very readable for those that like to read cover to cover, but it also makes a great reference.

The downloadable code is very usable and very complete.

All in all, if you are interested in Silverlight, this is a must have.

T. Anderson
16 December, 2008

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.



Sam
12 December, 2008

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.

Max Power
02 December, 2008

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.

Pierre Huguet
01 December, 2008