Pro WPF in C# 2008: Windows Presentation Foundation with .NET 3.5, Second Edition (Pro) (ISBN 1590599551) Book Reviews 1-15 Sorted By Most Recent, at VeryWellSaid.com

Great reference for WPF

This is a great reference for WPF--I've been looking for a book like this for quite a while. It's probably not the best learning resource, but once you have a general understanding of WPF, this book can help dig deeper into specific topics, like "How do I change the startup behavior of a WPF apoplication? Can I put my UI files into a DLL, so I can swap the UI?" Chapter 3 helps answer both questions. No hesitation recommending this book to intermediate-level WPF developers.

(Review Data Last Updated: 2009-01-02 07:57:28 EST)

11-11-08

1\1

Very thorough, but not clear for learners

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.

(Review Data Last Updated: 2008-11-23 00:46:14 EST)

10-14-08

(NA)

Great book! Better than WPF Unleashed!!

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.

(Review Data Last Updated: 2008-11-11 05:40:03 EST)

10-13-08

(NA)

Very nice

Really a very nice introduction to WPF, it includes all the details to include win32 controls in WPF windows and WPF controls in WinForms app. I definitaly recommend this book!

(Review Data Last Updated: 2008-11-11 05:40:03 EST)

10-08-08

(NA)

Best technical book I've read in a while

This book is laid out in a clear, straight-forward way. The chapters, and content within each, flow well. There is so much to learn with WPF, evidenced by the size of this book, that it can be daunting. However, Matthew takes a pragmatic, step-by-step approach which makes it very digestible. On numerous occasions I've found myself learning something in a paragraph but coming up with questions, only to find answers to those exact questions in the following paragraphs.

I just searched and see that the author is writing a Silverlight 2 book. Sign me up!

(Review Data Last Updated: 2008-10-14 04:53:47 EST)

09-24-08

(NA)

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.

(Review Data Last Updated: 2008-10-08 06:21:34 EST)

09-02-08

(NA)

Very helpful

So far, I've found Pro WPF to be a decent reference and a very good overview of WPF. I was particularly interested in the chapter on text layout, which was good but not great. I would have appreciated it if that chapter was a little more in depth, but it's still the best treatment of fixed and flow documents that I have found.

(Review Data Last Updated: 2008-09-25 04:38:27 EST)

08-09-08

(NA)

Excellent reference but can be difficult to wade through at times

This is the book to get if you want expert guidance on, say, how to leverage WPF features to give your user interface controls a different look and feel because the author provides plenty of substantive examples and even covers some features not documented well elsewhere. If you're looking, however, for guidance of the more "architectural" kind such as what WPF facilities and techniques will help you implement modern day variants of the Model View Controller design pattern such as MVP or MVVM, you will not find it in this book. Also, this is probably not a book that you can (or will) read from cover to cover in a few sittings because some of the scenarios covered may not be applicable to you right away in that they're fairly advanced or don't occur frequently, so be forewarned: this book can be difficult to wade through at times. But overall, an excellent reference!

(Review Data Last Updated: 2008-09-03 04:09:32 EST)

08-09-08

(NA)

Can be a daunting book to wade through

This book is brimming with so much content that readers may often feel they've been left to their own devises to figure out what content may be applicable to high-probability scenarios and what may really be just nice to know minutiae that they may not really have to use anytime soon. The author does provide such guidance every once in a while but not often enough, and even when he does, I sometimes wished he had just skipped the minutiae altogether to save me some precious reading time.

(Review Data Last Updated: 2008-08-11 06:13:19 EST)

06-25-08

(NA)

Saved Me Many Many Times

I love the Petzold book Applications = Code + Markup, but it covers a subset of WPF and is out of date now. Pro WPF in C# 2008 is up-to-date, covers a much larger subset, and doesn't shy away from the hard stuff. Almost every time I turn to this book, I find either an answer or a new pointer that leads to the answer on-line. Yesterday, I found a method called TemplatedParent that is ill-covered in my other books. Today, I found IScrollInfo. Highly recommended as a well-written, comprehensive, up-to-date WPF reference for intermediate to advanced developers. For starting out, I still recommend the Petzold book, which really tries hard to build understanding.

(Review Data Last Updated: 2008-08-15 04:39:00 EST)

06-04-08

2\4

I wish i could give it 4 star, but...

I generally like Matthew's writing, but this one really fell short of my expectations, esp considering it's a 2nd edition (I've never read the first edition, though).

Pros:
- it gave a good overview of what WPF is all about(the underlying DirectX etc), and why we need yet another Windows GUI technology.

Cons:
- it lacks substance, each chapter mostly contains a shallow description of a "feature" of WPF, with some code snippets. The content feels more like a showoff of what WPF can do + some tips & tricks.

- there is no central theme in the book, ie. the author doesn't hold your hand and build a non-trivial app using the key features of WPF. So at the end of the book, i'm still at a loss as to how to re-write some of my Windows Forms apps in WPF.

- it's completely focused on the WPF technology, with hardly any information on the fundamentals of Computer Graphics theory and how it's related to WPF. I guess for most folks who just want to cobble togther a form with a few data bound controls in it, this prob isn't a problem. But to create commercial apps in WPF, this book is just not enough.

(Review Data Last Updated: 2008-06-26 06:47:58 EST)

04-23-08

0\9

Good so far

The book is good so far. Only about 150 pages into the book, but so far easy to read, examples range from simple to more advanced. I will post another review upon completion.

(Review Data Last Updated: 2008-06-05 19:04:25 EST)

04-11-08

2\2

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.

(Review Data Last Updated: 2008-04-23 20:42:16 EST)

03-19-08

2\2

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.

(Review Data Last Updated: 2008-04-12 08:12:53 EST)

03-14-08

3\3

I highly recommend the book...