| | |  | Software Engineering | Home » » » Pro WPF in C# 2008: Windows Presentation Foundation with .NET 3.5 (Books for Professionals by Professionals) | | | | | | | Description: | | The Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation provides the foundation for building applications and high–quality user experiences in Windows Vista. WPF blends application user interface, documents, and media content to provide richer control, design, and development of the visual aspects of Windows programs. Author Matthew MacDonald shows you how WPF really works. His no–nonsense, practical advice will get you building high–quality WPF applications quickly and easily. MacDonald will take you through a thorough investigation of the more advanced aspects of WPF, and its relation to other elements of the WinFX stack and the .NET Framework 3.5, to complete your understanding of WPF and C# 2008. WPF's functionality extends to support for tablet PCs and other forms of input devices, and provides a more modern imaging and printing pipeline, accessibility and user interface automation infrastructure, data–driven user interface and visualization, as well as the integration points for weaving the application experience into the Windows shell. What you’ll learn - WPF basics: XAML, layout, control essentials, and data flow
- WPF applications: Navigation, commands, localization, and deployment
- Advanced controls: Custom controls, menus, toolbars, and trees
- WPF documents: Text layout, printing, and document packaging
- Graphics and multimedia: Drawing shapes, sound and video, animation, geometric transformations, and imaging
Who this book is for Developers encountering WPF and .NET 3.5 for the first time in their professional lives. | | | Product Details: | | | Author:
| Matthew MacDonald | | Paperback:
| 1040 pages | | Publisher:
| Apress | | Publication Date:
| March 07, 2008 | | Language:
| English | | ISBN:
| 1590599551 | | Product Length:
| 9.2 inches | | Product Width:
| 7.0 inches | | Product Height:
| 2.1 inches | | Product Weight:
| 3.15 pounds | | Package Length:
| 9.2 inches | | Package Width:
| 7.0 inches | | Package Height:
| 2.3 inches | | Package Weight:
| 3.1 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 37 reviews |
| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
Average Customer Review:
 ( 37 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
37 of 39 found the following review helpful:
 I highly recommend the book...Mar 14, 2008
By T. Anderson
I have the first edition of this book (Pro WPF: Windows Presentation Foundation in .NET 3.0), so I was hesitant in buying this version. WPF 3.5 did not have major feature upgrades from 3.0. I am glad that I did buy it, but I can't really recommend doing so for other people with the .NET 3.0 version, only because there is not that much new material.
However, I highly recommend the book if you don't own the previous edition. I also highly recommend it even if you have the first one and you are like me and pretty much trashed my first edition copy. It has been through several storms and has a lot of notes and ink running all over it. So it is nice to have a new copy to beat the crap out of. I also like having the latest information I am using up to date.
Here is what is new in this release:
--Firefox support for XBAPs.
--Data binding support for LINQ.
--Data binding support for IDataErrorInfo.
--Support for placing interactive controls (such as buttons) inside a RichTextBox control.
--Support for placing 2-D elements on 3-D surfaces.
--An add-in model.
Matthew has added content for all the topics listed above.
Some of the highlights of the book I like:
--His in-depth coverage of printing.
--His Custom Elements chapter.
--The new chapter on Application Add-Ins.
--The chapter on using ClickOnce with WPF.
--Everything is gone into in depth. This is not a brush over the topic book.
--The usability of the code makes the book all that much more valuable.
The book focuses on WPF only. It has a few pages on LINQ, but that is about it as far as the rest of the .NET 3.5 framework goes. In other words, the book does not cover how to best use WPF in relationship to WCF, WF, or LINQ. This does not take anything away from the book because Matthew does not claim that the book does this. I only mention it because his ASP.NET 3.5 book does go into LINQ application integration.
The downloadable code is very well organized and is very usable.
I highly recommend this book to anyone getting into WPF with .NET 3.5.
11 of 12 found the following review helpful:
WPF is next great Web/Winform StandardMar 19, 2008
By Franc Stratton
"franc_s"
Please buy this book if you haven't explored Windows Presentation Foundation. The separation of the UI (with XAML) and the code-behind page controller (C# or VB.NET) will revolutionize .NET development. If you don't have a designer you must learn Microsoft Expression Blend, but a UI designer will push your view (from Model-View-Controller) to the extreme.
The browser-based XBAP works like a Winform app, but it can be viewed in Internet Explorer. If you've ever tried to create a dirty flag to denote changes in form data in ASP.NET, you know how superior Winforms are for this purpose. XBAPs give you the ability to access the textbox text changed event like Winforms. This takes a ton of JavaScript to accomplish the same programming task in ASP.NET forms.
The update of the application to the client machine (the XBAP runs on the client) can be done with new technolgy called ClickOnce. What a technology!
I've even tried to learn the XAML markup from a very good chapter on this.
This book is really well done. Kudos to the author.
13 of 15 found the following review helpful:
A great way to learn WPFApr 11, 2008
By Charles J. Jurczak
I've bought three books about WPF, including Windows Presentation Foundation Foundation Unleashed and Silverlight 1.0 Unleashed. Matthew MacDonald's book is for developers and is what I needed. It uses Visual Studio 2008 and is up to date with current development tools. I've also read his books on ASP.NET and this is one top-notch author. I fully recommend this book.
15 of 18 found the following review helpful:
 Very thorough, but not clear for learnersNov 11, 2008
By Pierz Newton-John
This is certainly a thorough book, at 1000 pages highly suitable for thumping down on tables in order to impress people with the kinds of arcane stuff you get into. There are an awful lot of gotchas in WPF for the newbie, and one of the strengths of this book is that it has lots of detail about these unexpected behavioral quirks that would otherwise have you tearing your hair out and swearing at your innocent monitor. However, as a learning tool for someone who knows nothing about WPF - surely most of its likely readership - it isn't the clearest or easiest read. Compare it to a truly excellent technical book like my all-time favorite Albahari's "C# in a Nutshell": Albahari starts with simple topics, clearly explained, and gradually progresses to the more difficult and obscure. Macdonald starts his explanation of Dependency Properties with how you create your own ones in .NET: a complicated operation which I for one had no interest in at that point, since I didn't even get what they were yet!
Same story with Control Templates: we get the whole stuff about visual trees before we get to see a simple example. Most of the time, we developers try to start by *doing* something with the technology, before we worry too much about the arcana of how it all hangs together under the hood. More grievously though, Macdonald doesn't actually explain how one's newly created control template is applied to an actual control. I guess one is assumed to be able to work out something so obvious for oneself! All his examples show control template markup, but nothing about how they get applied to the control they are templating. Sure, it's easy once you know, and you can see how it's done in the downloadable code for the book, but something so fundamental should be explained in the text, and right at the start.
I don't know if the better-known Applications=Markup+Code does a better job as a tutorial, so I can't tell you to buy something else, but to be honest I'm sort of wishing I had.
3 of 3 found the following review helpful:
Great book! Better than WPF Unleashed!!Oct 14, 2008
By J. S. Cox
"Stuart Cox"
I ordered this book and WPF Unleashed (Adam Nathan) at the same time. I read WPF Unleashed first because I saw the reviews on Amazon.com. Then I read this title, Pro WPF in C# 2008.
I found this to be a much better book than WPF Unleashed. It's thicker, has more content, and dives much deeper. Don't get me wrong, they are both excellent books and I recommend them both. But if you really want to understand core WPF concepts, this book is the better choice.
See all 37 customer reviews on Amazon.com
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