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Thursday, August 23, 2007

Review: Expression Blend Bible

by Donald Burnett

Microsoft Expression Blend Bible
by Gurdy Leete and Mary Leete

ExpressionBlendBible

ISBN: 978-0-470-05503-8
Author: Leete, Gurdy
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Author: Leete, Mary
Author: Leete, Gurdy
Subject: Internet - Web Site Design
Copyright: 2007
Edition Description:Wiley
Series: Bible
Publication Date: June 2007
Binding: Paperback
Language: English
Pages: 768
Dimensions: 9.18x7.46x1.53 in. 2.34 lbs.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 Excerpt
Index

Expression Studio has found itself without much coverage book-wise. This is quickly changing ,however, and this book is a wealth of information aimed at people new to Expression Blend. If you are new to design concepts, you will also enjoy this book because not only does it give you the technical background you need to start to create WPF applications (This book covers Expression Blend 1.0) but gives you many great examples of assembling an application. This book covers tool-by-tool all of the capabilities of Expression Blend. It also goes outside the realm of Blend and into Visual Studio for some of the more exotic capabilities of Blend to create things such as XBAP browser application. Exemplary chapters include the one on XML databinding. There is also great coverage on a subject most books and documentation is missing, when it comes to XAML, navigation across a multi-page application using the in-built "navigation" services. This makes tasks such as creating an application that uses menus and hyperlinks very easy to create. Many people consider the documentation Microsoft provides on this functionality lacking basic functionality. This is one book that delivers with great illustrated examples.

I find the book a very easy read and very comprehensive. It covers most of what you need to get started in WPF and XAML. If you are looking for extensive Silverlight coverage I suspect that will happen in a later version of the book as the author gets time to review Expression Blend version 2.

I whole heartedly recommend this book. Buy it today!

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