Essential Silverlight 3 – a must read

Hats off to the author Ashraf Michail for his book Essential Silverlight 3. This book is a must read for anyone who wants to delve into Silverlight programming.

Here are some of my thoughts/comments/reviews regarding this book:

• The chapters are laid out in an intuitive manner
• Best compiled book on implementing performance enhancements; Keep out an eye for ‘Performance Tip’ sections throughout the book
• ‘Under the Hood’ section at the end of every chapter (starting chapter 2) helps you understand the inner workings of Silverlight runtime
• I finally got the answer for my question – Is there a benefit for declaring objects in XAML vs loading them in code? (read the book for the answer; I don’t think Ashraf will be happy if I reveal the secrets described in his book)
• Best chapter(s) per me: Chapter 4 on how to display high quality Text (I made some changes in my site right-away) and Chapter 10 on Data Binding

A chapter or two dedicated on developing a (simple) LOB application would’ve crowned this book ‘top-notch’.

‘Under the Hood’ disclaimer: Ashraf paid me $3.75 to write this review… just kidding. I usually don’t write book reviews, but after reading the book I felt it would be wrong not to write one. This article is solely my opinion and was not influenced by anyone or anything… other than the book of course. (just to avoid any legal issues).