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Pro Silverlight 4 In VB
jddp writes "MacDonald is a programmer's programmer, and Pro Silverlight 4 in VB is a model of what a programmer's guide should be. He explains a mass of technical information in considerable detail without losing the big-picture. His clear and concise exposition of concepts and functionality is never confusing or needlessly repetitive. The book's organization is logical, yet the chapters can be read in isolation, as the need or interest arises." Keep reading for the rest of jddp's review.
Pro Silverlight 4 in VB
author
Matthew MacDonald
pages
896
publisher
Apress
rating
9/10
reviewer
jddp
ISBN
1430235489
summary
An invaluable reference for professional developers wanting to discover the new features of Silverlight
One thing this book doesn't provide is an overview of the subject for a novice trying to get the big-picture. After the briefest of introductions (10 pages), the author leaps right into building applications. Nor does it provide every technical detail you will need to complete your application. (That's why we have the web). However, if you want a book that can take you from having a rough map of the territory to being a self-sufficient Silverlight developer, I highly recommend this one.
Starting from the fundamentals of Silverlight such as XAML, Layout and Elements, McDonald rarely puts a step wrong as he winds through the technical details, progressing to specific functional areas such as such as Animation, Data Binding and Web services. Each chapter provides a brief overview of the functionality addressed before stepping through the programming details. His code examples are concise, but also convey the significance and use of the features very clearly. The examples do not sprawl across pages and pages, as in weaker tutorials, but they do build upon one another when necessary. Working code implementing the examples from the text is available at MacDonald's personal site for anyone to download — but apparently only in C# (as far as I could see. The VB version may be coming later, just as the VB book lagged the C# version). Due to the intelligent choice, structuring and clear implementation of his examples, I have found them a useful jumping-off point for "real-life" applications on several occasions. The author has gone beyond the scope of the book in at least one case, implemented an "advanced" capability (support for large file up/downloads via a Web Service) that I was specifically interested in.
As mentioned, the book does not contain an extensive technology overview and this is reflected by the absence of many of the buzzwords associated with Silverlight from the index. You will find no mention of RIA services. MVVM is only touched upon in the context of the new SL 4 support for the Command pattern. (Even so, his brief explanation is a great example of MacDonald's lucid and economical expository style. You could trawl the web for a long time without finding such a straightforward explanation.) However, while MacDonald does not attempt to convey any over-arching architectural vision, he is perfectly capable of clarifying some abstract design concepts. In Chapter 4 of the book he is already tackling the intimidating-sounding topics of Dependency Properties, Attached Properties and Routed Events. By the time you've read a few pages you're wondering what all the fuss was about. After less than six pages, MacDonald is working through a meaningful application of attached properties (a custom layout panel). Most of the chapter is devoted a detailed explanation and illustration of Mouse and Keyboard event handling, and to the new Commanding support in SL 4.
A final caveat: This is not a book for someone wanting to catch up on what's new in Silverlight 4. The information is there, but it is dispersed among the relevant sections of the old book, and there is no helpful index. Contrary to the impression given by the back-cover, the very occasional "What's New" boxes don't help much in homing in on new features. In fact, the organization of the material and most of the content is unchanged from the SL 3 edition, so I wouldn't buy this if you already have that book.
While reading this book, I sometimes wished for a wider view: discussions of the merits of different architectures; comparisons to design patterns used in other technologies, and so forth. This book will not be much help in defining the architecture for your next mega-app. This is a book to seize on when you need to get a handle on programming specific Silverlight features fast. You won't learn about every possible shortcut or dead-end on the trail, but you will never have to wonder where the heck you are.
While this book it isn't all things to all developers, it is hard to overstate its consistent intelligence and clarity, or its sheer usefulness (to programmers). Programmers just aren't supposed to be so articulate – are they?
You can purchase Pro Silverlight 4 in VB from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Starting from the fundamentals of Silverlight such as XAML, Layout and Elements, McDonald rarely puts a step wrong as he winds through the technical details, progressing to specific functional areas such as such as Animation, Data Binding and Web services. Each chapter provides a brief overview of the functionality addressed before stepping through the programming details. His code examples are concise, but also convey the significance and use of the features very clearly. The examples do not sprawl across pages and pages, as in weaker tutorials, but they do build upon one another when necessary. Working code implementing the examples from the text is available at MacDonald's personal site for anyone to download — but apparently only in C# (as far as I could see. The VB version may be coming later, just as the VB book lagged the C# version). Due to the intelligent choice, structuring and clear implementation of his examples, I have found them a useful jumping-off point for "real-life" applications on several occasions. The author has gone beyond the scope of the book in at least one case, implemented an "advanced" capability (support for large file up/downloads via a Web Service) that I was specifically interested in.
As mentioned, the book does not contain an extensive technology overview and this is reflected by the absence of many of the buzzwords associated with Silverlight from the index. You will find no mention of RIA services. MVVM is only touched upon in the context of the new SL 4 support for the Command pattern. (Even so, his brief explanation is a great example of MacDonald's lucid and economical expository style. You could trawl the web for a long time without finding such a straightforward explanation.) However, while MacDonald does not attempt to convey any over-arching architectural vision, he is perfectly capable of clarifying some abstract design concepts. In Chapter 4 of the book he is already tackling the intimidating-sounding topics of Dependency Properties, Attached Properties and Routed Events. By the time you've read a few pages you're wondering what all the fuss was about. After less than six pages, MacDonald is working through a meaningful application of attached properties (a custom layout panel). Most of the chapter is devoted a detailed explanation and illustration of Mouse and Keyboard event handling, and to the new Commanding support in SL 4.
A final caveat: This is not a book for someone wanting to catch up on what's new in Silverlight 4. The information is there, but it is dispersed among the relevant sections of the old book, and there is no helpful index. Contrary to the impression given by the back-cover, the very occasional "What's New" boxes don't help much in homing in on new features. In fact, the organization of the material and most of the content is unchanged from the SL 3 edition, so I wouldn't buy this if you already have that book.
While reading this book, I sometimes wished for a wider view: discussions of the merits of different architectures; comparisons to design patterns used in other technologies, and so forth. This book will not be much help in defining the architecture for your next mega-app. This is a book to seize on when you need to get a handle on programming specific Silverlight features fast. You won't learn about every possible shortcut or dead-end on the trail, but you will never have to wonder where the heck you are.
While this book it isn't all things to all developers, it is hard to overstate its consistent intelligence and clarity, or its sheer usefulness (to programmers). Programmers just aren't supposed to be so articulate – are they?
You can purchase Pro Silverlight 4 in VB from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
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No, thats Perl. This is a book about "silverlight"
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
is like a gourmand's gourmand eating at mcdonald's.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
While I don't know if this review is a "paid" review or not, I do know (from personal experience) that a lot of them are. Could /. consider adding a rule or guideline requesting the reviewer to state if he/she was given the book for free or otherwise compensated for the review?
I don't see anything wrong with that. A lot of professional software engineers use it.
I thought it was a Trick Question!
Professional and VB in the same sentence is incorrect grammar, right?
Silverlight isn't a rival to anything. This is like publishing a book "Fortran-77 For The 21st Century."
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The hip new generation of programmers are all using Visual COBAL!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
C# and VB.Net are two different syntaxes for using the same common runtime library. Arguing about whether C# is better or worse than VB.Net is the height of language snobbery. What matters is the .Net library underneath. The only reason to prefer one over the other is because you happen to prefer one syntax over the other.
What is so horrible about Microsoft?
I think you're confusing VB1-6 with VB.Net. In it's current iteration, it's a fairly nice OO language.
I don't use it because I'm a fan of curly brackets, but your writing it off suggests not having used or seen VB.Net in action.
Saying Android is a family of phones is akin to saying Linux is a family of PCs.
I can't implicitly convert between those two.
If you were using VB, you could! Especially if it wasn't what you wanted!
-- Home is where you eat your heart out.
And then have it only run on one platform. Amazing, vendor lock-in of many languages at once!
SL had the potential to be better than Flash.
But Microsoft is pulling the same shit Adobe is with Flash. Claiming it's "open" but gaming the spec release schedule in such a manner that it is impossible for anything but their implementation to actually work - By the time someone has implemented to the open spec, MS and Adobe have released new versions and content providers are using those new versions.
For example, there was hope that Monolight combined with Netflix transitioning to Silverlight would bring Netflix streaming to Linux. However, Netflix tracks Microsoft's Silverlight releases pretty quickly, meaning that on a consistent basis, by the time Monolight has caught up to wherever Netflix might have been, Netflix has moved on to the next Silverlight release. Same for nearly all other SL content out there.
It's the same sad situation for any of the alternative Flash players - They continue to remain novelties because Adobe never seems to update the spec until they have released the next version of Flash, meaning Gnash et al are always at least a generation behind. Let's not forget the fact that the Flash spec is missing critical stuff such as RTMPE documentation. (The only public RTMPE documentation out there was obtained via reverse engineering Adobe's implementation.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Matthew MacDonald has been doing Silverlight books since version 1.0. I own his C# flavor of this 4.0 book. He's one of those authors that waits until a new technology has soaked in a bit, his book reflects that (as opposed to getting the book out their as soon as 4.0 was released). This book came out about 4 or 5 months after Silverlight 4.0 was released.
Yeah, it does not support everything, is a patent mine field and is aptly named after a disease.
I promised myself that if I used the .net framework on a project again I would shoot myself in the leg.
So after I post this I am going read my ruby on rails book.
Yeah, it does not support everything,
Correct. You have much better portability by writing software in Mono and then porting back to .NET, although there are plenty of extensions in Mono that don't exist in Microsoft's implementation too.
is a patent mine field
Only because people like you keep saying that it is. In the real world, nobody is suing anybody over this technology. For Microsoft, Mono provides a legitimacy for their language to show that it really is cross platform, open standard. It would be a public relations nightmare if they did an about face on this. The general public won't be able to make the distinction between technology that is covered by the Microsoft Community Promise Agreement and the parts that is not.
and is aptly named after a disease.
You can't catch this from just by using software.
What patents does Mono violate that no other language violates?
At this point Unix-like design is a foundation of all general-purpose operating systems, EXCEPT ones developed by Microsoft. There is a good reason for it, however explanation would be a book on OS design in itself, and therefore beyond the scope of a response to some retard's offhand comment on Slashdot.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Yes, and this is why anybody who believes in open standards should stay away from Mono. If you follow Microsoft's lead you will get burned.
That doesn't make sense. There was nothing in what I said that could lead you to that conclusion. It is you own hatred of Microsoft makes you believe it. When has Microsoft ever made a promise not to sue for patent infringement about a public, free licence, and then turned around and sued anyway?
They won't give a shit once they get beyond the adoption stage. They'll just tell everybody to license their intellectual property that they invested in.
There is more than one standard covered by a promise not to sue. If they reneg on this one then all of their promises would be null and void. They wouldn't be able to convince anyone to use their standards then.
You're not a communist, are you? Don't they deserve to get paid?
I see we are dealing with an intellectual giant here. It was Microsoft who set the price for their licence, not me. They decided to give it away, as is their right. It is also their right to change the terms of their offers, but they know that the backlash against them would be very damaging if they screwed around with such a high profile agreement.
First you swallow the open parts, then you eat the rest, and finally you're locked in.
Then only use their standardised stuff. Use the C# language, compiled to .NET with Mono's extensions. Then you will be OK. But I don't think you need to worry. People have been saying that Microsoft will sue for 7 years, but it still hadn't happened. You can believe that they will do it, but there is no evidence to support that view.
When has Microsoft ever made a promise not to sue for patent infringement about a public, free licence, and then turned around and sued anyway?
I never said they did or will. I said, "anybody who believes in open standards should stay away from Mono. If you follow Microsoft's lead you will get burned."
Well, unless you mean that Microsoft will literally come around and set fire to you, then I can't see what other reasonable interpretation there could be. You claim this isn't about being sued by Microsoft, but then you go on to say:
Microsoft already has a patent deal with Novell and it's distribution of Linux. Don't want to be sued by Microsoft for using Linux? Buy Novell and pay royalties to Microsoft.
So you ARE talking about being sued. How much of that deal was just a PR exercise anyway? It is not as if any other distro has been sued - especially for something that Microsoft promised to keep free. The only close thing would be TomTom being sued for using FAT32, but then that is a technology that is actively licenced and has NEVER been given away. TomTom was violating the licence, and if it were the GPL licence that they violated then nobody around here would complain if they got sued.
But back to the topic in hand. If your entire reason to avoid Mono is because you might decide to go off and use another product (Silverlight), then surely you should be arguing against using Silverlight and leave Mono alone. To use a car analogy, it is like arguing that you should not buy a car because you might one day upgrade to a tank and shoot at people. A car will still get you from point A to point B even if you don't buy a tank, and Mono will still work if Microsoft decide to drop Silverlight. There is still no justification for your advice to stay away from Mono.