Product Description

Get a first look at Microsoft Silverlight with this practical introduction. This ideal reference delivers pragmatic advice, from in an insider s perspective, of how the tool was developed from concept to release. An expert on Silverlight and a Technical Evangelist on the Silverlight team delivers a first look at the new cross-platform, cross-browser plug-in and details the relationships among Silverlight and Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 and 3.5 technologies. Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) are Web applications that have the features and functionality of full desktop applications. Processing tasks are performed on the client, but data is stored on the server, allowing a much richer experience. With Silverlight, RIAs install quickly via a small, on-demand plug-in. This book shows how the first release of Silverlight will help simplify development and deployment of RIAs. Includes a companion Web site with code samples in Visual C# and Visual Basic.

Key Book Benefits

Delivers practical advice, grounded in an insider s view of how the tool was developed from concept (Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere) to release

Provides context about the relationships among Silverlight and the various .NET Framework 3.0 and 3.5 technologies

Places RIAs in context for Web and Windows® developers

Features a companion Web site with code samples in Visual C# and Visual Basic

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #460679 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

About the Author
Laurence Moroney is a Developer Platform Evangelist for Microsoft, specializing in Silverlight. Prior to joining Microsoft, he was Technical Evangelist for Mainsoft. He has authored or coauthored seven previous books.

Customer Reviews

Solid Intro to Silverlight 2 beta 2

This review refers to the beta 2 version of the book. This book is exactly what the title says - it is a good, solid introduction to programming Silverlight 2 beta 2 in C#.

Laurence does a good job of covering all of the basics of writing Silverlight applications - his web site has a good table of contents (http://blogs.msdn.com/webnext/) which clearly describes the books contents.

One of the features of the book that I especially like is the valuable information about how to run Silverlight from a Linux system and also information about using Silverlight with PHP, Java, MySQL, JavaScript, AJAX, Ruby, and IronPython.

Laurence has been very responsive in helping to resolve any issue with the code that I have had. The book's code is Silverlight 2 beta 2; however, there has been one minor upgrade and I am sure that there will be more so having good response from the author is very important when dealing with beta software.

I do highly recommend this book as a basic introduction to writing Silverlight 2 beta 2 code in C#.

David Roh

Brillilant Introduction
Laurence Moroney's book is a wonderful introduction to Silverlight 2, and he produced this when folks need it, just when Silverlight 2 is new. He did this by hard work, and by knowing the product inside and out (and he's providing continuing support through release and beyond.)

The book is extremely well written and well organzied, with solid coverage of all the core topics and a good bit beyond (including extensive coverage of Deep Zoom, interacting with ASP.NET and using Dynamic Languages such as Ruby)

Moroney is one of the most knowledgable writers about Silverlight, and his style is straight forward and to the point. This book is everything you might want in an introduction to programming Silverilght 2, and I would not hesitate in recommending it.

Jesse Liberty
Senior Program Manager - Microsoft
Developer Community Liasion

Great book worth recommending
This book has a great introduction of Silverlight 1.0, and had a nice flow of documentation that made the book a fun read. The book covered the silverlight platform well, and illustrated a few examples of how Silverlight can work in conjunction with a few other technologies like Asp.net and PHP.

The book had very good code samples to illustrate specific points of Silverlight 1.0 technology, and additionally included a good primer on the upcoming Silverlight 1.1. Overall I think this book is a great resource to get up and running on Silverlight in a short period of time.