e-Book Silverlight 4 in Action

eBook Details:
    Paperback: 800 pages
    Publisher: Manning Publications; 1st Edition (September 27, 2010)
    Language: English
    ISBN-10: 1935182374
    ISBN-13: 978-1935182375

eBook Description:
Silverlight 4 in Action: Silverlight 4, ViewModel Pattern, MVVM, and WCF RIA Services by Manning Publications

Silverlight in Action, Revised Edition is a fast-paced, comprehensive tutorial that guides the reader from
creating “Hello World” to coding production-quality, data-driven rich internet applications with graphics, audio, and video content. Written for a developer who already knows how to code in C#, this fluff-free book covers the basics quickly and dives into the heart of Silverlight development using XAML (a language for creating user interface elements) and Visual Studio 2010. You’ll learn not only how to accomplish tasks, but how the underlying runtime works.

In addition to the fundamentals, the book covers the new features in Silverlight like pixel shaders, webcam and microphone, as well as WCF RIA Services and patterns like MVVM (Model-View-ViewModel). It explains developing offline and “out-of-browser” applications, managing video and audio, handling validation, navigation and deep-linking, and how each Silverlight feature fits into the overall Silverlight ecosystem.

The overall goal of this book is to inform and educate you about the exciting and powerful Silverlight 4 platform. Think of it as a guided tour through the Silverlight 4 plug-in, runtime libraries, and SDK. After you’ve read this book, you should be able to confidently design, develop, and deliver your first rich interactive applications using Silverlight. To facilitate the learning process, I’ve structured the book to get you developing as soon as possible, while providing quality, in-depth content.

Silverlight 4 in Action is a comprehensive guide to application building using C#. It goes into action immediately in a thorough introduction. It then follows up with numerous nifty examples to explore flexible layout, control extensibility, the communication and binding models, rich media, animation, and much more.

This book explores practical questions in patterns, testing, and performance optimization throughout. No previous experience with Silverlight is required. Silverlight gives you entirely new ways to create rich internet applications, and now Silverlight 4 adds many powerful enhancements to the mix.

Who should read this book

This book is intended for developers who want to create nontrivial applications using Microsoft Silverlight 4. Though Silverlight provides numerous avenues for interactions with designers, this book primarily targets people who live and breathe inside Visual Studio. Team members in the integration role (those who take designs and implement in Silverlight) will also find the information valuable and useful.

This book assumes you have at least a passing familiarity with common web standards such as HTML, CSS, XML, and JavaScript. In addition, this book assumes you have a background using the .NET framework and Microsoft Visual Studio. Although we’ll be using C# as the primary development language, we won’t be reviewing the C# language or explaining basic programming constructs such as classes, methods, and variables.

Experience with previous versions of Silverlight isn’t required for this book.

What’s Inside

    Comprehensive and deep
    Author an authority
    Effective UI design with MVVM
    Building with WCF RIA Services
    Out-of-browser, COM and Custom Chrome

About the Author
Pete Brown

Pete Brown is a Community Program Manager with Microsoft on the developer community team led by Scott Hanselman, as well as a former Microsoft Silverlight MVP, INETA speaker, and RIA Architect for Applied Information Sciences, where he worked for more than 13 years. Pete’s focus at Microsoft is the community around client application development (WPF, Silverlight, Windows Phone, Surface, Windows Forms, C++, Native Windows API, and more). Pete Brown is a Community Program Manager with Microsoft on the developer division community team lead by Scott Hanselman. Pete’s focus at Microsoft is the community around client application development (Silverlight, WPF, Windows Phone, Surface, Windows Forms, C++, Native Windows API and more).

From his first sprite graphics and custom character sets on the Commodore 64 to 3D modeling and design through to Silverlight, Surface, XNA, and WPF, Pete has always had a deep interest in programming, design, and user experience. His involvement in Silverlight goes back to the Silverlight 1.1 alpha application that he co-wrote and put into production in July 2007. Pete has been programming for fun since 1984 and professionally since 1992.

Prior to joining Microsoft, Pete was a Microsoft Silverlight MVP, INETA speaker, and RIA Architect with 17 years experience building applications in everything from Assembly and C++ to VB and dBase to C# and .NET. In his spare time, Pete enjoys programming, blogging, designing and building his own woodworking projects, and raising his two children with his wife in the suburbs of Maryland. Pete lives with his wife and two children outside of Annapolis, MD. Pete Brown is the Microsoft Community Program Manager for Silverlight and WPF. The First Edition was written by independent developers Chad Campbell and John Stockton.

Author online

The purchase of Silverlight 4 in Action includes free access to a private forum run by Manning Publications where you can make comments about the book, ask technical questions, and receive help from the author and other users. You can access and subscribe to the forum at www.manning.com/Silverlight4inAction. This page provides information on how to get on the forum once you’re registered, what kind of help is available, and the rules of conduct in the forum.

Manning’s commitment to our readers is to provide a venue where a meaningful dialogue between individual readers and between readers and the author can take place. It isn’t a commitment to any specific amount of participation on the part of the author, whose contributions to the book’s forum remains voluntary (and unpaid). We suggest you try asking the author some challenging questions, lest his interest stray! The Author Online forum and the archives of previous discussions will be accessible from the publisher’s web site as long as the book is in print.

The source code for all of the examples in the book is available for download from the publisher’s website at www.manning.com/Silverlight4inAction and from the author’s website at http://10rem.net.

In addition to the Author Online forum available on Manning’s website, you may also contact us regarding this book, or anything else, through one of the following avenues: