Illustrated WPF (Expert's Voice in .NET)

I bought this book in July and it sat on the shelf until two weeks ago. When I finally decided to attack WPF, I bought the latest books so I could understand how it worked with VS 2010. I opened MAtthew MacDonald's book (Pro WPF in C# 2010) and started reading. Very quickly, I felt a little overwhelmed with all the details coming at me and no "mental mailbox" to keep them in perspective. I've found this is very common with technical books. It's not that the authors don't know their stuff. They do, but they don't write from the perspective of the reader and, as a result, little knowledge transfer takes place during the first read. Fortunately, I remembered this book and started reading. BAM! What a difference! Here was an author that understood how to transfer understanding to users very effectively! His writing style and fantastic illustrations had me really understanding things in a hurry. Take dependency properties. No other author had presented them to me in a way that "stuck to the wall". Until now! They are extremely powerful once you understand them and know how to leverage what they can deliver. With Dan's help, I'm now very comfortable with them. I'm a long time programmer specializing in delivering solutions on the Microsoft platform. I avoided WPF till now because it was such a major change and one I was a little intimidated by. I've now decided to take the plunge. Without this book, it would be a much more difficult task. With this book, I think my odds of WPF success have improved dramatically! If you want help from somebody who not only knows WPF, but also knows how to teach and achieve true knowledge transfer, buy this book!

I'm reading the other reviews of this product, and I'm scratching my head. How could you like this book? Where do I start? I guess with "Illustrated". The illustrations look like they were photocopied, faxed, mailed, then scanned, then taped to another piece of paper to be copied. It's also ironic that the author talks about how the XAML parser removes white space on a page that maybe has 2 sentences on it. This book is loaded with nearly empty pages. Only buy this book if you have never written a hello world program in your life. Then maybe you might find this book helpful. I'm thinking I'll just donate it to the library. Good luck.

This is the best WPF book I have read, so far. It explains the basic concepts of WPF in a way that is easy to understand and it doesn't rely on the reader having prior experience with WPF, unlike certain other books do. The book covers basic concepts, such as how to use many of the available WPF controls and it covers the slightly deeper concepts, such as how to use styles, templates, dependency properties, animations, routing events and commands. The examples in the book are simple and easily readable, although the Kindle edition shows the sample code as black and white images, which can not be searched and which do not scale well together with the text. The book does not contain in-depth information, such as how the rendering system implemented, how to best make your own controls or how to design your GUI, but the book can act as an introduction to better understand other books, which cover these subjects.

The content of this book seems sufficient for learning the basics of WPF but I'm not sure it does more than that. I'm an expert MVC4 developer and I was hoping to learn more about the framework but I feel it barely scratches the surface on a lot of topics. It's enough to whet my apatite for learning WPF, but I feel that I'll need to buy another book to take me to the expert level. One of my largest issues with this book has been expressed by many other reviewers -- the image quality is horrible. The text is fine, and when text is called out in the grey boxes, that is fine as well... but when there is an image of a WPF screen, flow chart, diagram or a screen capture of the Visual Studio IDE, then the quality drops. It looks as if the images used were highly compressed since there are compression artifacts and blurring in every case. This quality flaw makes reading the text on buttons and menus nearly impossible; text in callouts of imaged code blocks is small and that adds to the frustration. Mr. Solis' image on the first page is clear, though. Whoever published, and released, this book with this obvious flaw should reconsider their position. PS: For the author -- I've seen your replied to other posters implying they might have inferior 'bootlegged' digital formats; however, I assure you, my physical copy was legally purchased through Amazon as a new book and it has these issues.

This is the book. If you're wondering which book is best for learning WPF, you've found it. Having read portions of other books that cover the topic, and heard other people's opinions, one would think that WPF is a difficult environment to grasp. Not so, and this book proves it. Granted, it's a different model if you are used to WinForms or MFC approaches to Windows GUI's. It's a more complex tool, since it provides much more functionality. Solis does a good job in providing clear, understandable, and confidence-building material. Even though it's half the size of some other WPF volumes, he somehow manages to still cover the lion's share of topics as those other books. This is my first review on Amazon, but the author does such a great job, that I felt it necessary to let others know. Although it isn't tagged to a particular .NET version, he does have some material on the newer controls in 2010 (.NET 4.0). The coding examples are in C#, which stands to reason. As a long-time C++ developer, I have to admit that if one enters the managed environment, it's time to throw out other languages like C++, VB and Delphi, and stick to C#.

I fully agree with C.K Keenan's review titled "Scratching my head...". The illustrations in the book are of such poor quality, so fuzzy, that they are totally, utterly useless. Did the other reviewers actually read this book? I've bought four WPF books in the last three months and this is by far the worst. The concept sounds good -- provide plenty of illustrations -- but the delivered product fails totally to live up to expectations. Of the 4 books I have purchased my favourite one is 'Pro WPF in C# 2010'

Good book about WPF but there are better ones out there. I like the SAM's Teach Yourself WPF in 24 Hours better.

A great way to learn WPF and ìts inner components, it is very easy to follow and understand each aspect as you progress with each chapter

The only book on WPF (which I could found on internet), which explained the things in a easy, elegant and understandable way, Keeps your interest on till the end of the book. The author explained the depth of the content in simple pictures and diagrams. Its the best for beginners and Intermediate readers.

This is an awesome book written by an expert who gets you straight to the point without losing any time. Although one might argue that it does not necessarily cover all the features (an impossible feat for any book on any major topic these days), you will have a strong foundation to build upon by simply learning what is contained in this book. I would most certainly recommend this gem of a book to any beginner on WPF without hesitation.

This is really an excellent book. I wish I would start my WPF adventure with it. It is so clear and consistent. Although I have almost 2 years experience with WPF I still found it very informative and useful. There is so many pictures illustrating ideas it very useful for reviewing. Basically you take a look on the picture and memory comes back. I wish more book would be written this way.