Product Description

Silverlight is a lightweight browser plug–in that frees your code from the traditional confines of the browser. It’s a rules–changing, groundbreaking technology that allows you to run rich client applications right inside the browser. Even more impressively, it’s able to host true .NET applications in non–Microsoft browsers (like Firefox) and on non–Microsoft platforms (like Mac OS X). Silverlight is still new and evolving fast, and you need a reliable guidebook to make sense of it.

With four–color graphics and screenshots throughout, Pro Silverlight 2 in C# 2008 is the perfect reference: you’ll learn about the features that put Silverlight in direct competition with Adobe Flash, such as rich support for 2D drawing, animations, and media playback, and best of all, you’ll experience the plumbing of .NET and the design model of WPF through Silverlight—all of the same .NET technology that developers use to design next–generation Windows applications. Author Matthew MacDonald provides an expertly crafted tutorial written from professional developer to professional developer. You’ll learn to create rich media applications using Silverlight in the environment you’re most productive in–no matter what the target platform.

What you’ll learn

• Develop rich media applications using Silverlight across browsers and platforms.
• Create a project, set up a layout, and use controls.
• Handle 2D drawing, animation, and media playback through Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF).
• Integrate web services support.
• Use Silverlight in conjunction with ASP.NET and its interactions with HTML.

Who is this book for?

.NET developers encountering Silverlight for the first time. No prior knowledge of WPF or ASP.NET is assumed.

About the Apress Pro Series

The Apress Pro series books are practical, professional tutorials to keep you on and moving up the professional ladder.

You have gotten the job, now you need to hone your skills in these tough competitive times. The Apress Pro series expands your skills and expertise in exactly the areas you need. Master the content of a Pro book, and you will always be able to get the job done in a professional development project. Written by experts in their field, Pro series books from Apress give you the hard-won solutions to problems you will face in your professional programming career.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #204138 in Books
• Published on: 2008-11-25
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 640 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781590599495
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

About the Author
Matthew MacDonald is an author, educator, and MCSD developer who has a passion for emerging technologies. He is a regular writer for developer journals such as Inside Visual Basic, ASPToday, and Hardcore Visual Studio .NET, and he's the author of several books about programming with .NET, including User Interfaces in VB .NET: Windows Forms and Custom Controls, The Book of VB .NET, and .NET Distributed Applications. In a dimly remembered past life, he studied English literature and theoretical physics. Send e-mail to him with praise, condemnation, and everything in between, to p2p@prosetech.com.

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Customer Reviews

The most exhaustive and accurate coverage on the Subject
This book is very well organized and covers the essential silverlight subjects in depth. The color content makes a big difference for the ease of reading. The most extensive coverage of Silverlight capabilities from controls, animation, networking, databinding, isolated storage, multithreading and more... This book contains all you need to develop full featured applications in Silverlight.
It is the best book I have read on Silverlight 2 (and I've read 4 so far). Simple, I made it the recommended textbook for the silverlight class I am teaching at UCSD this winter.

Best out there to this date
I have had an opportunity to read a number of Silverlight 2 books that have come out on the market in the last few months. However this one is by far the best book on the subject going into depth on topics and covering ground that was completely ignored by other books. It is easy to read and I have already learned a number of things that I could make work at first but didn't know exactly what was happening under the covers. Highly recommend this book to anyone planning to learn more about silverlight 2.

What a great book!

I own several books written by this author and enjoy each one of them.
Most authors have great knowledge about topics they are writing about. Not that many have good ability to explain what they know. Mathew has a great talent of explaining things without going overboard, but still noticing all little "gotchas" that can make your life miserable.
I bought this book among several others after long time of working with Silverlight using Web as information source. This book is way above the rest of them. Despite being familiar with most of the material, I still enjoyed the book very much and picked thing or two that I was not aware of.
The layout is great, the pace is good, there are tons of illustrations and having text printed in color makes it a breeze to go through code samples - you feel like you are in a Visual Studio - your brain will automatically digest the code - with comments, attributes, qualifiers, etc.