John F. Cardwell said
In a nutshell, Mr. Gaudioso's aproach is super positive and thorough. I have had almost no trouble with the examples and I feel the examples will give me good tools for a solid foundation in WPF/Silverlight design and development.
I have been avoiding Silverlight since it first was released in Beta and I couldn't get it to work or make anything in it. Frustrating. I was hoping Silverlight would go away, but it hasn't. My boss gave me the "Friends of Ed" book and I was very skeptical, for I'm a religious-nutjob fan of the O'Reilly books. Surprisingly, I found myself whizzing through the book and actually liking Blend.
I have been using Adobe products for about ten years as a designer and I have been a Flash actionscripter for over two years. I thought I would never use Blend again, but this book has gotten me excited. C# and the dot.NET framework are so powerful and snappy. Visual Studio 2008 is nothing to be shy about. I like it a lot better than using the CS4 code editor. VS2008 practically writes your code for you.
I would definitely recommend this book for anyone wanting to learn Blend WPF/Silverlight. You will have the tools you need to get going and confident in Blend in less than a week.
John Cardwell,
Seattle, WA
Daniel K. Stern said
I read a lot of technical books. and in my opinion, this is a great one. The author covers large sections of Silverlight, WPF and Expression Blend 2 development through short, clearly-written, easy-to-understand, hands-on exercises. And it's fun! As a typical, graphically challenged developer, I didn't believe I had the ability to create decent looking web and WPF assets. I surprised myself at what I was able to accomplish by following the author's instructions.
Unlike so many other technical books, the quality of the editing and the proof reading is evident. If your learning style is to learn by doing, this is a great choice.
A Leroux said
The book starts the reader off without any assumptions regarding the reader's past experience. If a person is interested in going through the book, that person will likely already have the qualifications to understand its contents. As long as the person going through the book is able to take direction coupled with the ability to be self motivated, I think that many people will find this book to be an easy read - which is saying a lot for a book which sits among others which are often dry and difficult to get through due to their nature as being technical oriented.
The progression of the book from chapter to chapter is well paced, starting easy with a bang to draw the reader in, and later becoming challenging, but not impossible to accomplish. Just as the reader passes the middle of the book, the difficulty raises ever-so slightly, but not too far where the reader is thrown off.
The very last chapters are well placed as they are essentially review over the entire contents of the book. These chapters concrete the reader's newly acquired abilities while adding a touch of more difficulty to keeps the reader moving forward because they continue to learn more even to the end.
Finally, once one has gotten through the book, I'm left with the feeling that these 15 chapters are only the tip of the iceberg, that I can either obtain further knowledge through other books, or chart out on my own. The author on several occasions lists his email address for the readers to contact him, and I've discovered that unlike other authors, he actually does respond and is interested in what the reader is accomplishing, instead of having an assistant or someone else pat the reader on the head.
The only criticism that I truly have for the contents of the book is on the level of the User Experience. Throughout the book the author steps the readers through the creation of a multitude of custom controls, buttons and the like, but never steps the reader through a complete button as most users are comfortable with seeing, where the button or control interacts when hovering or clicking upon a button. That being said, there are several occasions where the author leads the reader through areas where the reader can locate and discover how to do such a task on their own. The book reads as a very complete well rounded book, save for that one lack, and for that, I find myself feeling that the inconsistency is uncharacteristic when compared to the solidarity which the rest writing presents.
Regardless, I much enjoyed reading the book. The author's personality shined through the book from cover to cover and gave the sense that he was talking to the reader, as opposed to at the reader.
Ariel Leroux
FacingBlend.com
Sharon Ford said
I am very impressed with this book on Microsoft Expression Blend 2. I would recommend it for anyone wanting to learn the program. Victor has a very nice, understandable writing style. The book is filled with easy to follow examples. But don't take my word for it; read the raving review of this book on this web site: [....]
Nice work, Victor!
Keith Smith said
This book is just enough to get you comfortable with the Expression Blend environment. It also introduces you to 3D tools which open up many possibilities. However, after only getting as far as chapter 2 in the Expression Blend Unleashed book, I realized that this book did not cover all of Blend's basic features. I feel that the author should have spent less time trying to impress the reader with cool 3D effects and instead should have spent more time making a complete tour of Blend itself. Yet, despite this criticism, this is still a good introductory book.
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