Steven Fox said
When first learning Silverlight 2, I picked up this book and got up to speed very quickly. It was a great introduction with lots of building block examples. I like practical books with lots of examples, so this book was great.
IT Guy said
This book is "ok", but honestly it's just not what someone new to Silverlight needs to see (especially if they are not strong in C#). To illustrate, look at the opening section on making the block sliding game.
There are a lot of assumptions about how comfortable the reader is with OO C#, to the extent that some parts of the example aren't labeled with a "This goes here" instruction, so if you don't know you can get frustrated.
Even myself, knowing a little bit about C# OO development got hung up waiting for more precise instructions.
Another peave I'm having, are the variable names in he code. Have we come so far to have variable names like this?
Canvas[] cI = new Canvas[16];
Image[] i = new Image[16];
int[] board = new int[16];
and
int nx = 0;
for (int ix = 0; ix < 4;="" ix++)="" />
for (int iy = 0; iy < 4;="" iy++)="" />
{
nx = (ix * 4) + iy;
i[nx] = new Image();
Come on guys, this is a learning book. How about this:
Canvas[] canvasArray = new Canvas[16];
Image[] imageArray = new Image[16];
int[] board = new int[16];
and
int imageIndex = 0;
for (int ix = 0; ix < 4;="" ix++)="" />
for (int iy = 0; iy < 4;="" iy++)="" />
{
imageIndex = (ix * 4) + iy;
imageArray[imageIndex] = new Image();
I know it's verbose, but as someone new to Silverlight, I find myself irritated at wasting time trying to keep track of cryptic variable names when they could easily have more descriptive names.
Sure, if this were a high performance web app you may need to keep sizes down, but this is a learning book.
There's a lot of good info in here no doubt, but I still think I'll be looking elsewhere for my "beginner"s" experience.
A final thought is the long winded framework description in the beginning. It's another typical MS documentation trait that just bores the reader to tears with things he or she may have little context with which to consider it. It should be high level, clear, short and sweet, and then move on to simple "hand's on" instruction. The long winded framework conversation should come at the end, after the reader knows what it all means.
So, just my two cents. I've only used and never written technical manuals so no doubt the author is more skilled than I. Please don't take my criticism as disrespect. Just trying to let folks know how it looks from someone who likes easy to use training manuals.
Thanks
R. Tremb said
If your looking for the examples in VB, forget it. At one time the author said he was going to do the VB translations. Never happened to my knowledge. To top that off, I MISSED MY RETURN DATE.
David E. Bakkom said
Seems awkward. It never seems to have what I am looking for, and the organization doesn't work the way my mind does. I found the Silverlight 2 Bible to be much more helpful.
Talha Shah said
This is a good book to start on Silverlight. It's a little shallow on network access and data binding but overall it does a great job of explaining Silverlight 2 fundamentals. Highly recommended if you are new to Silverlight 2.
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