Foundation Expression Blend 2: Building Applications in WPF and Silverlight | 
 enlarge | Author: Victor Gaudioso
Publisher: friends of ED
Category: Book
List Price: $39.99
Buy New: $23.98
You Save: $16.01 (40%)
New (10) Used (3) from $23.98
Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 81977
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 350
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 8.8 x 7.5 x 0.9
ISBN: 1590599764
Dewey Decimal Number: 006.78
EAN: 9781590599761
ASIN: 1590599764
Publication Date: March 24, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new may have remainder mark or slight shelfwear
| |
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
In this book, you'll: - Learn the Blend 2 and Visual Studio 2008 development environments
- Create designs using Blend 2's unique tools
- Use XAML and C# to add interactivity to your designs
- Publish your Rich Media Applications to the Web using Silverlight
The only real tool available for creating Rich Media Applications, web-based animations, and games has been Flash until now! WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) and Silverlight have opened the door of Rich Media Application development to Microsoft .NET developers. With Microsoft's new Blend 2 and Visual Studio 2008, you can now create compelling Rich Media Applications complete with animations and even 3D! This book shows you how to take full advantage of Blend's new interface, together with and Silverlight's vastly improved designer-developer workflow, guiding you through every step of development from downloading and installing of the development environment through creating finished, functional projects. You'll learn how to create simple drawing applications with the InkCanvas, make tabbed and scrollable interfaces, as well as build fully featured media players, photo galleries, and interactive 3D designs. Each chapter discusses major WPF and Silverlight features, provides a hands-on tutorial, and explains how that feature is implemented in the real world. In the end, you will have a collection of impressive WPF and Silverlight applications that can be added to your portfolio. Whether you're an experienced .NET or web developer, or you're just starting out, this book will provide you with all you need to create Rich Media Applications with Expression Blend 2.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 4 more reviews...
 Excellent book on Blend 2 December 8, 2008
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!
 Just enough to get your feet wet November 14, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
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.
Greatly Improved my Understanding October 31, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book was great for me. I am an old-style coder/programmer who hasn't done much actual coding for a long time. I recently ran across some stunning product simulations written using Expression Blend, so I installed a copy and tried to figure it out. I didn't have a clue! So, I looked around and found this book, bought it, and went through the examples. What a revelation! I finally understand why Microsoft wanted to "blend" the content designer and the developer worlds w/ this product. Not only that, but this book also gave me more insight into how Visual Studio can work on the SAME code set that Blend is using. Great technique for collaboration. The book is well-paced, well-written and full of useful examples. Downloads of more complex examples are available, if you want to save some time. The author did a great job adding clarity to what can be a complicated development domain.
The best book for designers by far October 29, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
As a designer who'd previously been using Photoshop, Flash and Dreamweaver for the past 10 years to lay out Web pages, orienting myself to the Silverlight/Blend paradigm was a challenge. Xbaps, Xaps, C#, Visual Studio and serious development are all enough to scare the frozen latte out of the average designer with my credentials. But boredom, a zest for the next cutting edge technology, and a desire to expand my portfolio of skills landed me squarely in the midst of this challenge and I'm here to tell you Mr. Gaudioso's book is the one you want if you're a designer like myself.
With exceptionally patient and generous writing, Gaudioso takes the designer into the world of serious development and stays with you throughout. He does so by introducing you step by step to this unique new application designed for the very purpose of bringing designers and developers together to create the Web applications of the future. He doesn't sugar-coat anything, Blend is a serious tool meant to be used with other serious development tools like Visual Studio. But he's able to step into the mind of the uninitiated and walk you through setting up your development environment in easy-to-understand ways.
I especially appreciated those instances in which he analogizes Web paradigms to explain WPF design constructs, comparing, for example, resource files to CSS and certain layout elements to HTML tables.
If you're a designer interested in getting your arms around WPF, Silverlight and Expression Blend, Gaudioso's book ought to be the first book you buy.
Very Good Introduction to Blend 2 October 28, 2008
Silverlight and Blend new product releases are moving so fast that it is very difficult to find books that are up to date; however, one of the things I especially like about this book is the awesome and rapid support that Victor provides for the readers. Victor has updated samples rapidly, added new examples, fixed examples that were broken with the new releases of Silverlight 2 and Blend 2.5 preview (now Blend 2 sp1) very quickly.
Victor has provided new examples and Word docs for the Blend 2.5 (now Blend sp1) update which includes the new Visual State Manager, MediaElement, and custom button creation.
David Roh
|
|
|
