Microsoft Silverlight Books

.NET Developer Group Coban

Me parece un libro muy interesante ya que en lo que puedo ver me permite aprender a agregar efectos visuales y tener sitios web interactivos. Esto es muy importante ya que podría personalizar mi sitio web y hacerlo llamativo y animado. Excelente!!

Marissa Yohana Chicnchilla Gonzalez

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Explica desde lo básico hasta lo detallado, muy buena referencia para las aplicaciones de siguiente generación en la web.



Jose Rolando Guay Paz
03 July, 2009

Review by Philippe Vialatte

Recently, I decided to dive into Silverlight. Curious about this framework, but not having a big experience of WPF, I looked for a book to go through the beginner phase and the basic concepts, but is also as a reference once the initial learning stage has passed.

Silverlight In Action hit the spot for both these needs.

After introducting Silverlight, as well as a discussion on how to integrate Silverlight into web pages, the two following chapters cover over seventy pages the different types of layout, and the controls available in the framework. These chapters have, in my opinion, a good balance between the amount of code and explanation, given that each control is described with a short example of code and a screenshot of the result, each snippet / capture being focused on a single control.

The next two chapters introduce data binding (similar, if less rich than in WPF) and the various means of communication available (Web services, WCF, JSON, RSS and sockets, the roundup is complete). Complexity, particularly the chapter on communication, raises a little bit.

The next three chapters were the hardest for me, as they relate to multimedia content, vector graphics and animations. Although this is not my forte, these chapters are quite didactic and detailed enough to get at least an understanding of these topics sufficient to spice up a Silverlight project (do not expect to start a game in 2d after the chapter on animation) .

The final chapters will address the styling of controls and components (to provide a coherent and original user interface ), as well as some topics covered more quickly, such as Isolated Storage, the DLR, and other information on hosting.

All in all, this book is excellent to begin SilverLight, but also to come back regularly. The only bemol is the lack of a common thread to the book, allowing, for example, see the construction of an application, iteratively, starting from the layout to the accommodation. Another black spot is the website "companion" to the book, which is mentioned several times in the book, which consists altogether in a single page with links to the code samples and the book home page.

Developpez.com writers
22 June, 2009

Silverlight 2 NOT in action

This has to be the worst programming book that I have ever read. No good code samples and only snippets of markup. DON'T BUY THIS BOOK!

Stephen G. Holdorf
15 May, 2009

Good introduction for new programmers

At some point between reading Programming Windows®, Fifth Edition (Microsoft Programming Series) and now, I stopped buying tech books, mostly because online documentation, blogs, and IDE intelligence features have made dead-tree tomes redundent. However, after 18 months of not picking up XAML/WPF/Silverlight through osmosis, I figured this technology was going to require a few hours of cover-to-cover reading before I groked it.

Unfortunatley this has been a reminder to me of why I don't buy tech books anymore.

This isn't a knock to Chad or John--they've written a good introduction to Silverlight 2--it's simply that I couldn't be any further from their target audience.

Two assumptions are made throughout the book: the reader knows little to nothing about forms development of any kind and the reader has never heard of Silverlight prior to picking up this book.

Both might be valid assumptions for many readers, but to put it bluntly, this book is only just over 300 pages, and a great deal of that space is spent on pedantic descriptions of the general behavior of buttons, checkboxes and the like, and includes far too many trivial code samples.

For example, when describing the various font rendering options, instead of including one code sample that set all five attributes and then referencing that sample as each attribute is described, five seperate samples are included, each setting only one property. Frankly, I already know what Italics means, could take a guess if I didn't, and passages that can be paraphrased as "setting FontStyle to Italics makes text Italic" are not useful to anyone.

A further criticism is the Silverlight fanboy attitude of the book. When writing technical documentation, please do not try to tell me how great a technology is. I'm reading the book already, so I must think it has some value. However, as a forms engine, Silverlight is inferior to almost anything else except Flash, to which it is at best par. It is far slower and less accessible than either a thick client app or a standard html form, and provides almost no additional value in a business app. It's text rendering is abysmal, unable to kern text, unable to properly render anti-aliased text on any platform (something Flash and cross-platform browsers like Safari seem to do very well). And it has an installed base that's still miniscule compared to Flash: not even Microsoft uses it for its own animated banner ads.

Silverlight IS getting better though, and I think everyone sees that it will be an honest Flash alternative within the next few years, but right now it has exactly one thing going for it: .NET. I can leverage my existing multi-decade investment in the Microsoft platform to reach a space I couldn't before. Yet, as this book is aimed squarly at someone without any depth of experience, it ultimatley provided very little value for me.

Nicholas Nystrom
31 March, 2009

Failed to Capture the Zen of Silverlight 2

When learning a new technology, I typically pick up at least one book to capture the zen of that new technology. This book failed me in this regard.

J. M. Gorman
28 March, 2009

Greate book for learning silverlight

This book really helps me to understand silverlight well.

I'm not a web developer, but more like just normal software developer. So I didn't have lots of conecepts for web developer and current web development trends.

This book provides those valuable information to me and it really helps me to fully understand how I can start development with Silverlight.

Jay
14 February, 2009

Solid Introduction to Silverlight Development

I had the chance to read through Chad Campbell and John Stockton's book Silverlight 2 in Action recently. I've read this book along with a few others on Silverlight 2 recently. I'll be posting reviews of the others soon, too. Overall, this book is well written from 2 very knowledgeable Silverlight sources. Before I get to my conclusion, I'll explain my thoughts on each chapter.

Quick disclaimer: I have my own book out on the market titled Data Driven Services with Silverlight 2. I do not consider these books to be competitors because they fill different informational needs. Silverlight in Action 2 targets Silverlight as a whole while Data Driven Services with Silverlight 2 targets data, services and line of business applications specifically. So these books compliment each other, IMO. But my experience with Silverlight, teaching it, and writing about it gives me a good perspective on reviewing my colleagues' book.

Chapter 1 - Introducing Silverlight

Nice introduction of XAML and attached properties along with some overviews of what Silverlight is and is not. Like most intro chapters, it won't be off interest to those already in aware of these points while for beginners it does a good job of setting the stage.

Chapter 2 - Harmony with the Web

Interesting chapter that discusses placement of the Silverlight control, how to embed it in HTML, the plug in features, interaction with the DOM, browser detection, and the javascript.js file and it relevance. This provides a good foundation for those interested in the surrounding aspects of a Silverlight control.

Chapter 3 - Back to Basics: Layout and Text

This is the first chapter that dives into the XAML for Silverlight more deeply. The basic layout panels are discussed and how they work. It also goes over the UIElement and FrameworkElement classes and their importance to Silverlight. Its a short chapter but an important piece of information that is laid out well in the book.

Chapter 4 - Handling User Interaction

This chapter starts by covering the ways that user interaction can be handled with clicks, mouse events, drag and drop and more. Then it dives into the most commonly used controls in Silverlight. Each control gets a brief mention at what it does and how to use it. I think it could have used a little more information and examples on each of these controls to help the reader decide which controls to use and in what situations. Covered a lot of ground but felt light to me. I was very glad to see quality coverage of the DataTemplates here.

Chapter 5 - Getting Down with Data Binding

This chapter covers the data binding syntax, binding modes, value converters, and all the essentials of data binding. It also covers the DataGrid control, which is great since this control needs more attention than many others since it has so many more features. A discussion of LINQ and its role in Silverlight is also presented at the end of this chapter. Overall, nice coverage of the "need to knows" of data binding.

Chapter 6 - Networking and Communications

This starts with a great description of cross domain communications and how to implement policy files. Its a nice level of detail before diving into the communication means. The chapter then follows up by showing how to talk to WCF services from Silverlight and how to talk to REST from Silverlight. The WCF coverage was OK, but the REST coverage felt light to me. Especially since the next topic in the chapter was covered well in in great depth: reading syndicated feed items. There is a lot to cover in this chapter and most topics are hit very well.

Chapter 7 - Managing Digital Media

This chapter shifts gears a bit and dives into video and other media with Silverlight. I really liked the way this chapter laid things out for the reader. It went into excellent depth on media and showed some good examples too. It contains some excellent additional tips to discuss how to deal with some issues when using video in Silverlight.

Chapter 8 - Getting a Grip on Graphics

Shapes, brushes, transforms ... these are all basic parts of a Silverlight graphical design. They are pretty easy when broken down ... and this chapter does a good job of laying them out for the reader. Good stuff, don't skip this chapter if you are serious about Silverlight UX.

Chapter 9 - Bringing it to Life: Animation

This chapter has some great topics, though I found some of it a bit confusing at times. Overall it is a solid chapter though covering the essentials of animation in Silverlight.

Chapter 10 - Giving it Style

Excellent chapter. I really enjoyed reading through this chapter as it covered some great material that is critical to UX. Resources, visual states (with the all important VisualStateManager), templates ... all critical component to creating a smooth and enjoyable user experience ... and this chapters does a great job explaining them.

Chapter 11 - Enhancing the Experience

This is one of those chapters where you find a variety of topics that you need to know but don't necessarily fit in any particular area. the chapter does a good job of covering its concepts, especially with Isolated Storage.

Chapter 12 - Share the Light: Distribution and Deployment

This chapter does a great job at explaining how to deploy a Silverlight control and provide a nice Silverlight installation screen for the user. Good stuff that we sometimes take for granted as developers.

Conclusion

Very good book. I give it 4.5 stars out of 5. I enjoyed the book and its presentation of the material. I found very few areas that were light while the vast majority of the material did a solid job of presenting itself to the reader. I did find a few areas that I thought could have been expanded (as I mentioned in the chapter breakdown), but overall its a solid book. I definitely recommend this book to anyone looking to learn to develop with Silverlight 2.



John Papa
05 February, 2009

Too little about too many topics

I was deeply disappointed in this book - it purports to be an introductory text, and I suppose it is... if you are a master of WPF, BCL, .NET, etc. Only the most cursory overview of a wealth of topics, ranging from simple (basic XAML) to complex (Data Binding) is given, and leads to far more frustration than enlightenment. So, if you are a desktop developer for the Windows environment, this will be a good book to show you how Silverlight is not exactly what you are used to. If you are not, go elsewhere.

Aaron Lile
21 January, 2009

Want to master Silverlight? You must read this book!

The book is very well written, Chad Campbell and John Stockton guide you to master every single aspect of Silverlight programming using a friendly writing style and powerful examples ready be used in your applications.
But the book also provides many other topics: why you need to learn and use Silverlight and how it compares with other RIA technologies.
I can only recommend to read this book and to keep it in your desktop for reference during your daily job.

Davide Zordan
31 December, 2008

Great Silverlight Primer!

I'm fairly new to Silverlight development, but as its become an essential part of my job I needed to get up to speed quickly. I took a look at a couple of other books before this one, and I've got to say this blows all the others out of the water. Great for a quick primer or as a reference book for the bookshelf. If you want to learn Silverlight don't pass this book up!

Kevin Babcock
27 December, 2008

Who is this book for?

I am scratching my head trying to decide who might be interested in such a book.
For long time I was getting my Silverlight knowledge from the official Silverlight sites and community blogs, which provide immense wealth of information. Finally, I decided that it was time to review some printed materials and bought several books that had high marks among reviewers. The goals were to have single reference book (instead of tons of web pages printouts) and / or have a good training book for my co-workers. Sadly, this book does not serve either goal.
The book has very short paragraphs on almost everything it describes. In fact, it itself is very short.
As a learning book - I had very hard time getting through this book (and I am already familiar with the most material in it). The style of the book is very dry and in short paragraphs. There are little illustrations. There is no flow of explanation to speak of. It has layout of the reference book, but it has only short explanations of everything. As a matter of fact, I found Silverlight Help or official web site being much more informative as a reference than this book.
Do yourself a favor and buy "Pro Silverlight 2" by Mathew MacDonald instead - what a great book that is.



Sam
12 December, 2008

The Fastest Way to Learn Silverlight 2

Silverlight 2 in Action is the only book I used to learn Silverlight 2. Packed with great example code, this book will allow you to learn Silverlight 2 from scratch or upgrade your skills from the previous versions. Learning Silverlight as an early adopter has been tough, but this book has been a lifesafer as it is the most concise resource available to get you up and running in very little time.

Bryan Phillips
03 December, 2008

Looking for THE book to get on Silverlight 2.0?

This is simply hands-down the best book on Silverlight 2.0 on the market to date. Campbell not only has an understanding of the intricate details of the Microsoft Silverlight platform that rivals nearly anyone on the planet, but he also has that rare gift of being able to break it down into a form that is readable and valuable to any person on their path of utilizing Silverlight to develop rich web applications (from novice to pro).

I can't rave enough about how accurate this book is (especially in an age where books are written before the product is finalized). Though it is one of the first books out on the subject, it even contains the absolute latest changes Microsoft made to the platform before RTW (for example, Databinding on the DataGrid). It's all there.

Overall this book deserves a spot on your library, especially if you consider yourself a web developer.

Matthew Henkler
02 December, 2008

The best silverlight book ever

This is the only silverlight book i will ever need!!! The authors put a lot of emphasis on accuracy and attention to detail. I think quotes listed the back cover of the book say it all.
"You simply must have this book by your side" From the forward by Ashish Shetty Silverlight Program Manager, Microsoft

"If you want to learn Silverlight 2 get this book! Two thumbs up"-Pete Brown, Microsoft MVP

"A thorough resource, essential for a Silverlight developer."-David Barkol Author of [...] AJAX in Action

"...it greatly improved my Silverlight skills."-Mark Monster Software Engineer, Rubicon

"...will get you up to speed on Silverlight 2!"-[...] Architect, Social Solutions

"In-depth and easy to read."-Rama Krishna Vavilala Author of [...] AJAX in Action
What are you waiting for...buy this book before they sell out!!!!

R. Tolbert
22 November, 2008

Review of Silverlight 2 In Action

Now that Silverlight 2 RTW is out and the dust can settle down, it might be a good idea to start looking at the books on Silverlight. One recently completed book, by Chad Campbell and John Stockton, is Silverlight 2 In Action.

Both Campbell and Stockton are active Tweeters that you might want to follow with your favorite Twitter client, and Stockton in particular has quite a presence on the Silverlight Forums. Overall, this is a book that will satisfy both beginners to Silverlight as well as more advanced programmers who may not necessarily need "the basics".

Silverlight 2 In Action is laid out in 12 Chapters:

1 Introducing Silverlight
2 Harmony with the web
3 Back to the basics: Layout and text
4 Handling user interaction
5 Getting down with data binding
6 Networking
7 Managing digital media
8 Getting a grip on graphics
9 Bringing it to life: Animation
10 Giving it style
11 Enhancing the experience
12 Share the light: Distribution and deployment

The first chapter gives background information and some interesting statistics. It also talks about some basics that will be helpful to beginners and even to intermediate - level programmers. Expression Blend is covered quite well here.

The second chapter covers how Silverlight interacts with the HTML DOM of the browser and how the Silverlight plug-in works. It also covers installation issues and handling events.

The third chapter covers layout and text - the concept of the Canvas, how the XAML works, how to arrange and layout content, and more. UIElement and FrameworkElement are covered. All is in great detail.

The fourth chapter covers user interaction - drag-and-drop, controls, and dialog boxes. Keyboard input and events, the mouse, and much more.

The fifth chapter covers databinding - binding syntax, data sources, binding modes, the DataContext property, customizing the display, converting values, DataGrid and subcontrols, using LINQ, and a lot more.

The sixth chapter covers networking - trust, security and browser limitations, cross-domain policy, and connecting to data sources of all types. Very detailed treatment here.

The seventh chapter convers how to manage digital media in detail.

The eighth chapter deals with graphics - drawing, images, composite geometries, brushes, gradients, you name it, they seem to have it covered here.

The ninth chapter covers animation -- storyboards, doubleAnimation, the works.

The tenth chapter covers styling - resources, project structure, bundling of resources, and more. Visual State Manager is also discussed.

The eleventh chapter deals with enhancing the user experience -- IsolatedStorage, dynamic runtime XAML treatment, BackgroundWorker, updating the UI, retrieving content on demand, and more.

Chapter twelve covers distribution and deployment of Silverlight applications: UserControls, Dependency Properties, navigation, splash screens, and more.


Silverlight 2 In Action is loaded with excellent diagrams, illustrations, code samples and XAML. It is obvious that the authors took pains to ensure that they produced quality reading content. There is also an active forum for the book, in case you want to "keep up".

I've read a number of Silverlight books to date; many suffer the scars of having been begun for earlier Silverlight versions and have had to be updated as Silverlight has changed. Silverlight 2 In Action does not suffer from this -- it is feature-complete for the Silverlight 2 RTW (release) version and I do not believe I have seen any Silverlight book yet that has this much detail on virtually all the facets of Silverlight development.

Campbell and Stockton have done an excellent job. Recommended! I'd also like to mention that I'm pretty impressed with the Manning books in general so far.



Dotnetsky
11 November, 2008

Great book to learn Silverlight 2

This has been a crazy summer, but since our daughter has decided not to show up on her due date (which was September 24). I finally got some time to sit down and read a pre-release of Manning's Silverlight 2 in Action. I know the two authors who wrote this, and while John and I have had beer and burgers up in Bellevue, Chad and I have yet to meet up offline. So if I have to pick on someone, it will be Chad ;)

[ Disclosure: I was given a MEAP copy of this book specifically for review purposes ]

Executive Summary: If you want to learn Silverlight 2, get this book

First, a comment on organization. I like the way Chad and John have organized this book, building up from simple to more advanced concepts. While that may be a no-brainer, many authors lose sight of what it takes to bring a person up to speed on a new technology, and often start off with a concept that is just completely foreign to them. For folks who have an understanding of Silverlight, the first chapter will be review, but that is to be expected.

I tend to prefer books that are more presentation of facts than just run-throughs of tutorials. I know many folks also like the tutorial approach as well. For me, this book is a great example of the factual approach I prefer. Lots of detail and very well organized. You can approach the chapters or the subchapters in an ad-hoc way without getting lost in the middle of a larger tutorial. Great stuff!

One thing that stood out in chapter 1 was the mention of attached properties. This is often left out, and really is, along with the whole concept of dependency properties, a core concept that isn't intuitively obvious from looking at source and markup. The first time you look at xaml, you often wonder what the heck that "Canvas.Left" is doing on those controls.

Chapter 2 gets into the theory and practice of how Silverlight sits on an html page. The book explains the two separate OMs and how they integrate to build a full solution. It also goes into detail on the instantiation/installation model and the properties for the objects/functions used. I haven't seen this level of detail in any of the other books or online resources.

One you get past all that great information in Chapter 2 (which may be something you skip past at first, but will want to return to), Chad and John get into the guts of Silverlight programming, graphics, text and layout. From there he goes into controls, input and focus.

Then in Chapter 5, the guys talk about Data Binding. Binding is another one of those essential skills any Silverlight and WPF developer needs. Sure, Binding in WPF is richer, but it is still extremely useful in Silverlight 2. The chapter explains in detail what it takes to bind something, and what the under-the-covers binding process looks like.

Including LINQ in 5.5 seemed a little odd at first, but you have to cover it somewhere, since LINQ is an important technology that Silverlight can use. We even used it back in our Silverlight 1.1 alpha application in July 2007. So, including it in a chapter on Data Binding probably wasn't a bad idea.

Chapter 6 gets into a topic near and dear to my heart : Networking and Communications. This is the main chapter that John Stockton wrote. The authors do a good job here covering all the communications mechanisms in pretty good detail. I was about to complain about the lack of WCF Duplex, but then I found it under the advanced topic - a good place for this technology. The chapter glosses over the server-side work required to make the example work. As much as I would have liked to have seen that in there, I can understand why that might take up just way too much room in the book (and the book is on Silverlight 2, not WCF)

The section on sockets was just a placeholder in the version I reviewed. If the coverage of sockets is as good as the rest of the chapter, I have no doubt the content will be good.

Chapter 7 covers media and delivery mechanisms for that media. Media has been pretty beaten to death since Silverlight 1.0, so despite the great coverage of the content here, you may think there's nothing new to learn here. However, the chapter has great detail not only on the properties, but the lifecycle and order of events. Great stuff!

Chapter 7 is also the chapter where you'll see how to work with images and Deep Zoom.

Chapter 8 goes into vector graphics and brushes, and does a great job explaining all the moving parts there. Chapter 8 is also where you'll find the information on transforms. Transforms apply across the board to most any element, so don't assume by the placement here that they are restricted to vector graphics elements.

Chapter 9 goes into animation. I won't insult you by saying this topic is scary to developers, as I think most developers looking at Silverlight will be comfortable at least understanding the basics of animation. However, good animation can be daunting, and this chapter gives you at least the foundation you can build on or use to execute on the animations the designer has provided.

If you're an animation professional, or used to professional animation tools, you may want to skip chunks of this chapter, but most folks will need this basic understanding.

Chapter 10 goes into styling. First the chapter covers the basics of styling (and source URIs and resources), and then it gets into control templates. Finally, it tackles VisualStateManager, arguably one of the most important styling and state concepts.

Chapter 11 gets into more of the goodies that Silverlight includes in the box. Smaller topics like Isolated Storage, creating Xaml at runtime, background threads, downloading content at runtime (an expansion of networking concepts) including fonts and compressed files, and Silverlight 2 Xaps, and the DLR all get sections here.

Chapter 12 covers packaging up your wonder creations as units you can distribute to others. This isn't xap deployment, but about creating things you can share. Chad also offers up a decent navigation pattern here that seems to work well. This is the chapter where you'll find preloader / splash screen information as well as hosting and streaming. Of all the chapters, this was my least favorite due to its organization. That may be because it is unfinished, or because it was simply the last chapter in the book, and Chad had to pop a lot in there without making the book 1300 pages :)

I found a few small nits in the book, but I suspect those will be corrected in the final version. Overall, my opinion is that this is a very strong Silverlight 2 book.

Do I recommend this book? Definitely. If you are new to Silverlight, this one will be great resource for you to quickly get up to speed. There's just enough Blend in there to make sure you get the basics of the tool (which is often all most developers will need) and plenty of markup to help you along the way.

Two thumbs up.

Peter M. Brown
11 November, 2008