Silverlight 2 in Action

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

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.

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.

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

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 applicati