Silverlight 3 Programmer's Reference

One Minute Bottom Line

Review

As a developer who typically doesn't venture too far into the "visual" side of things, normally hiding in the invisibility of server side logic, I was really surprised by this book. I've been seeing so many Rich Internet Apps (RIAs) over the past few years, always making me want to learn more about them (but never having time to devote to learning these "rich" visual techniques), this book was able to introduce me to so many concepts in a relatively short time. The biggest surprise for me was that the book was in full color with many examples of popular sites that I didn't realize were using Silverlight! The Silverlight 3 Programmer's Reference authors are able to demonstrate just how familiar Silverlight development could be to someone who already has experience with other programming languages (.net, Java, Javascript, etc...), and even how to integrate standard existing languages with it to create beautiful rich applications.

This book is divided into 3 parts, with the full APIs and other useful information in the appendix. Part one covers all of the basics of Silverlight 3: Xaml, the plugin platform you develop on, the available APIs and controls, and the wide variety of browsers and OS es that it supports. Part two goes a little more in depth covering how to quickly dive in to the essentials behind development in Silverlight. Then in part 3 the authors introduce you to the fundamentals of building your first applications. The book does an excellent job of describing so much and giving you all of the tools to get started developing Silverlight. The books full color examples and accompanying sample code the authors suggest are meant to help you learn, without having to be in front of a computer the entire time you are working your way through. Although, if you do type in some of the examples throughout the book, you will not only be learning by doing, but if you are at all as non-visual as I am, you will see your web pages and apps become way more aesthetically pleasing!