Applications = Code + Markup: A Guide to the Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation

This book seems to have had several negative reviews. The gist of most people's complaints seem to be: (a) "There's no XAML until Chapter 19" and/or (b) "There aren't any pictures". The Complaints - are they justified? a. No XAML People making this complaint have in my opinion totally missed the point for several reasons. Firstly, this is not Charles Petzold's "How to Write XAML" book. It's a book whose title explicitly tells you that it will approach WPF from both the code (C#) and markup (XAML) perspectives. Unusually (actually I think it is uniquely) he doesn't mix and chop up the two approaches, but deals with each of them in isolation. Secondly, WPF is not XAML. You can use XAML, sure. You'd be silly not to in many situations. But XAML is only one part of the big picture. As this book clearly shows, you can successfully create an awful lot of WPF output with code alone. b. No Pictures Normally I would have some sympathy with Complaint (b) because it's always nice to see what the code samples should produce. But if you use this book as the author intended and actually run the samples yourself you will gain far more than any quick glance at a screenshot would give you. You will gain insight and experience in how to master this new technology. The Book This is a book that very carefully works its way through the requirements needed for the reader to achieve a thorough understanding of the major concepts. One of the reasons why I recommend reading it - and using it - from cover to cover is that, even in the early basic chapters little gems of code and explanation are slipped into the narrative or the examples. Often these begin to deal with more complex topics that you will come on to in more detail later. It is crammed full of detail. Mostly it's the kind of detail that you really need once you've got past the "let's play with WPF and see what you can knock out in a couple of hours" stage. The detail you need when you move on to the point where you want to do something that isn't necessarily easy out of the box, but is achievable if your understanding is built on stone, not sand. If I have a complaint, it's a minor one: occasionally he lets the Math geek get out and play a bit more than strictly necessary, but even that is fairly rare. The code samples are in C# only. However, Young Joo on the VB Team at Microsoft has organised for some chapters to be translated to VB.NET and there are more to come. You can access them from here: http://blogs.msdn.com/vbteam/archive/2008/01/07/petzold-wpf-book-sample-conversion-new-chapters-young-joo.aspx . Summary If you are committed to fully understanding WPF then this book is one you really should buy. By all means get others too. I already have several; they all serve their purpose, are very useful and I refer to them regularly. But when it comes right down to the "roll your sleeves up, go sit in a quiet place with book and PC to l

I think that Petzold was reading my mind when he wrote this book. I don't like XML, and I don't like "cheating" with XAML when you can write good clean C#. The first half of this book is entirely C# programming in WPF. I am using this book to help me write an abstraction layer above WPF. That simply would not be possible with XAML, which in my opinion places the design of the application at too low of a level. Petzold leaves no stone unturned, and whenever something seems weird, he doesn't ask us to trust him that it makes sense; he explores it in depth for us. I can't imagine that many other authors go through that kind of trouble when they're writing on tight deadlines. Petzold tells it how it is, and he includes the "why." Therefore, I recommend this book to anyone who strives to become a bit of an expert in WPF, not just a get-the-job-done programmer. I would consider this an advanced book at times because I find myself reading and re-reading sections to understand it. The explanation is there, but it's not trivial, and with so many pages in the book already, there is no room to be wordy.

I purchased this book late last year, took a vacation and spent a week reading it cover to cover. Since that time I've written several production WPF applications of moderate complexity that are several generations beyond the WinForms and WebForms apps I had been writting. Several months ago, when it was released, I also got to read Adam Nathan's book on the topic of WPF. Having read both books and used WPF to produce better apps under the usual deadlines, I can honestly say that I benefited from the additional insights gleaned from both books. When I read Petzold's book and saw the code first approach with XAML introduced later, my impression was this seemed contrary to the preference to XAML I saw espoused in other sources and beta books. As I reconciled this new technology being taught by a long tenured veteran, I got a feeling that perhaps earlier concepts around Win32 UI programming may be the lens through which the author is presenting the material on how to best apply WPF. Needless to say, I paid attention and got more value than I anticipated and beyond what I learned from his WinForms book of similar size. While Adam Nathan's book was a more efficient read for me, and one that I could appreciate in its attention and orientation to the more mainstream presentation of WPF, I think that later book in conjunction with this one is quite useful. My real critique of Petzold's book was that it should have played more to the what may have been the author's strengths in elucidating the API and imperative coding in WPF. Such an approach may have been a great book as a complement to the many XAML focused ones to follow. I believe the API focused chapters that do exist makes Petzold's book a great contribution to WPF knowledge and application. Sure, in my day-to-day I strictly enforce the UI separation by defining a majority of UI elements in XAML. Without Petzold's book I probably would have went further in this approach. Yet, in reading his material I was reminded of and given an appreciaton for the techniques and the potential benefits of using the WPF API more explicitly to peform a range of tasks that works in concert with XAML declared elements to provide the complete solution. For understanding the benefits and mechanisms of the WPF API this is a great complement for the many XAML dominated books out there. I rate it a 5 because I learned a greater variety of interesting details related to the WPF API than I would have been predisposed to explore or unable to find just using the MSDN documentation. For WPF API knowledge and understanding that can enhance the code side of solutions defined to a greater or lesser degree in XAML this is a great buy.

Disclaimer - I am one of the senior leads in WPF and helped answer a few questions for Charles (as I do for other writers, press, and developers), and I bought my own copy of this book. Windows Presentation Foundation sets a new baseline for an application development framework, not only for Windows development, but across the industry. Of note are the integration of UI, documents, and media functionality into a consistent programming model, and the way that this set of functionality interoperates, as well as the expressibility of these concepts in XML (the set of XML tags is referred to as XAML). This is a lot of material to cover, and this book does the best job so far in covering the breadth of knowledge that you will need to develop WPF based applications. Charles's book reads very naturally (sometimes it felt like I was reading one of the Inside Mac books 18 years ago, which I really enjoyed). Charles provides a good introduction in the first four chapters to get you going, and then takes you through the key built-in layouts (you can also extend by creating your own Panels - chapter 12). In chapter 8 and 9 he goes through some of the fundamentals that you will need to build your own custom elements/controls, which he tend proceeds to cover in chapters 10, 11, and 12. Chapter 13 through 16 go through some key controls in a lot of detail. Chapter 17 takes you into Printing. In chapter 18 you build a full simple application (a Notepad clone). Chapter 19 kicks-off a series of chapters that deal with XAML. Chapter 22 deals with some key concepts, such as running WPF applications/content in a browser, and navigation applications. Databinding is covered in chapter 23, followed by Styles and Templates (a great way to sequence these concepts, building on previous concepts). Chapter 26 covers concepts related to a key real world scenario - Data Entry and Data Views. Chapter 27 through 31 deal with my favorite topics - Graphics and Animations. Overall a great book, and a good read. Essential for learning WPF at your own pace and getting exposed to the breadth of functionality. Some of the things that he does not cover: 3D graphics, Media (audio/video), XPS, and Typography functionality.