by Adam Nathan.
A few days ago, I finished reading one of the best books on Silverlight (actually, it’s the second I’ve read) until this day.
The first thing that impressed me was the tone. This is how I should write my BSc. thesis. An easy to digest professional tone. Not to boring and dry, but not quite like a blog post.
What makes this book the best?
- Very useful FAQs in every chapter, on subjects like differences between Flash and Silverlight, what web server do you need to deliver Silverlight, and other topics that interest mainly the Silverlight newbies.
- Another goodie in this book is the frequency of sections called Digging Deeper, covering under-the-hood topics like the implementation of createObjectEx or hands-on applied topics, like avoiding “Click to activate and use this control” in Internet Explorer.
- Also, the author proves his Silverlight skills by giving up advices like “Inline XAML doesn’t work in Firefox unless the DOCTYPE element is removed!” or “The XAML file used as the source must be served from the same domain as the web page!”.
Very useful indeed. Especially for those who run into problems like these and give up before they even start learning.
The chapter on XAML is very straight-through, making the difference between WPF and Silverlight crystal clear. This time also, the tip boxes make the difference.
A whole chapter dedicated to text. Boring, you may say. Not if you’ve heard Paul Dawson’s “Killer Digital Reading Experiences” presentation.
Overall, this is one of the best works on Silverlight I’ve put my eyes on. It’s very hands on, straight through, full of useful tips and advices from real-world experiences of a person that really knows what he’s talking about (he’s the founding developer of Popfly). Plus, the tone is quite pragmatic, the author shows exactly what Silverlight can and cannot do.
This book doesn’t really come as a surprise to me. WPF Unleashed is by far the best book on WPF out there.
Read online here.
Blog post here.
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