Pro WPF in C# 2008: Windows Presentation Foundation with .NET 3.5

By Matthew MacDonald

Book Overview

The Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) 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.

In this book, author Matthew MacDonald details how WPF really works. His no-nonsense, practical advice will get readers quickly and easily building high-quality WPF applications. MacDonald guides readers 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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1590599551
• ISBN13: 9781590599556
• Release Date: March 2008
• Publisher: Apress
• Length: 1040 Pages
• Weight: 3.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 2.3" x 7.5" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

A must have for serious WPF users

What makes developers who migrate from WinForms, MFC, etc. excited on WPF is the plenty of paths that goes to the customization of built-in/user-defined controls. This book covers all aspects of control customization clearer than any other online article, or book on WPF that I've read. It's initially my primary source of information on WPF, as it has a broad coverage of topics with a well defined scope.

A great way to learn WPF

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.

WPF is next great Web/Winform Standard

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.

I highly recommend the book...

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.