Professional Silverlight 2 for ASP.Net Developers

This is a great book for people who already have experience with ASP.NET and want to learn all the features Silverlight offers and how to integrate both techniques in one single solution. This book covers every aspect of Silverlight in detail from explaining the client and server architecture to Data Security and Animation. One of the most interesting chapters is Chapter 11,this chapters explains how to create a custom control for Silverlight and how to apply different styles and even animations and templates which are covered in detail on chapter 14 (-Graphics and Animations-). I would not recommend this book for readers seeking to start learning ASP.NET or Silverlight. If you have already worked with ASP.NET in the past and want to navigate through the new world of Silverlight then this is the right book for you.

As usual, Wrox have delivered another quick-start, hit the ground-running leg-up for developers to climb the learning curve of a new technology quick and painlessly. As the web continues its absorption and replacement of the thick-client, advanced browser functionality is definitely the direction in whick client / server software is headed. Technology such as this lets us provide a comfortable user experience with rich feature set. With close to 100 contols, rich control templating support, JSON serialization, local storage, XAML.. all the new features which make our lives easier as developers, explained clearly and concisely by the guys at wrox.. another 'must have' on my desk!

I love this book, straight to the point not fussing around with hundreds of pages of code (it just shows you the important bits, download the full code if you want the full app). I have been developing web and flash applications for the last 5 years and this book will remain near my computer for a while. Strong points: * Really good ideas around simulating LOB applications, like paging, modal dialogs and communication between packages. * The performance chapter is really useful, not commonly found in tech books. * I kind of disagree with other reviews about data binding, it shows you all the possible ways to achieve them and it is put in practice on the other chapters. * The communications sections is also very good, I have coded really useful integration modules using sockets. * It has a pinch of humour with some personal stories. * Customs controls chapter is really good, from simple customization to generic.xaml Some warnings: * Not for .NET beginners and C# only code and samples * There is a small section on DLR, a pity as I was looking forward to integrate my Ruby skills. The sample is good but I wish another book on this area is published soon. * It is big! I am really happy with it and really excited about the technology, I just wanted to share this as sometimes buying is just a lottery.

Don't be confused by the title of this book - it's 95% about Silverlight. I think its just one of those "publisher title formulas". Of course, most all Silverlight development is done by "ASP.NET" developers because you are using Visual Studio 2008 and an ASP.NET Web project to host the Silverlight control. And of course, Expression Blend will also load a Silverlight Visual Studio project to do your design work and XAML layout. Jonathan Swift, Chris Barker, Dan Wahlin, and Salvador Patuel have put together a very well-designed, informative book on all major aspects of working with Silverlight 2. I am not familiar with all the authors, but I know Dan Wahlin pretty well and he's a real thinker. Dan is the one who, among other contributions, designed the WCF polling duplex game app. The book starts out with the obligatory first chapter about Silverlight / history and so on. But from that point on it gets a lot better. Chapter 2 provides a feature - complete description of Silverlight Architecture, what's "in" and what's "out", and XAML. Chapter 3 is a condensed treatise on XAML and why you need to learn how to use it. Chapter 4 gets into the actual programming model of Silverlight, how applications are composed, namespaces, pages, Javascript, DOM manipulation, the SL Object Model, Dynamic XAML, Events, Threading, Routed Events, BackgroundWorker, and a lot more. Chapter 5 deals with Expression Suite and creating the User Interface. You get a whirlwind tour of the Expression family of products, the layout process, controls, full-screen support, localization via resources, and more. Chapter 6 comprises a comprehensive treatment of all the Silverlight controls, including the new Toolkit controls. Forty five pages worth! Chapter 7 provides coverage of Styles and Templates - inline styles, specifying styles, overriding styles, and templating along with VisualState and template binding. Chapter 8 covers User Interaction - UIElements Events, consuming properties, input devices, storyboards, keyboard, ink, drag and drop, and navigation, with lots of great code samples, visuals and charts. Chapter 9 gets into the area of communication- Networking, data processing, Cross-Domain support, policy files, WCF and ASMX services, service proxies, REST API's and services, processing XML data, JSON, serialization, sockets, feeds, and more. Chapter 10 covers all the data framework options, LINQ, Data controls, data binding, complex binding and conversions, dependency properties, data repositories, Isolated Storage, ADO.NET Data Services and more. Chapter 11 is devoted entirely to the creation of Custom Controls and control architecture. Chapter 12 covers security - the Security Model, Cross - Domain Security, and integration with ASP.NET Security. It ends with some coverage of obfuscation. Chapter 13 provides feature - complete coverage of audio and video in Silverlight. Chapter 14 covers graphics and animation. Chapter 15 explains troubleshooting and

I have bought this book in conjunction with Pro SilverLight 2 in C# and the results were fantastic! I have been learning about the SilverLight approach and I think there is a big potential for my future ASP.NET projects! The book satisfies my expectations, as it goes through a journey were I learnt about the technology from scratch and how to integrate it to my web pages. The book is well written and includes best practices recommendations that I found quite useful at this stage were the technology is quite new. The security chapter gave me a very good overview around the considerations that I should take when developing these type of applications, as it was my first concern. The other really interesting chapter is the custom controls one, starts really simple and reaches the full customization potential of SilverLight. Finally, this book was including a chapter on performance, not usually covered by other publications, I found it very useful. Once again, Wrox is not letting me down. Looking forward for another edition on SilverLight 3!