Book review: Essential Silverlight 3

When I first flipped thru the pages of “Essential Silverlight 3”, I said to myself “Great! another book teaching how to draw circles and rectangles with Silverlight!”.  Boy was I wrong!

“Essential Silverlight 3” is a book written by Ashraf Michail, an architect on the Silverlight team.  Throughout each chapter, Michail explains in sections called Under the hood how the Silverlight runtime works.  What makes this book so special is that it is filled with performance tips that only a Silverlight team member could new.  Michail explains what to do and what to avoid and writes in a direct way that is easy to read and that makes everything crystal clear.

At bit of a warning: if you’re looking for a Silverlight book to help you build business apps, learn XAML, learn animation or other Silverlight techniques, you’ll have to look elsewhere but since this book covers how the runtime works and how to avoid pitfalls, it is truly essential in any Silverlight bookshelves.

Run, don’t walk, and buy/order this book.