This review is very tough to write. First because I’ve not read every Silverlight 4 book that is out there (and many are not yet released) and second, because the one I keep finding answers to my questions in was written by my boss: Pete Brown. That said, the three books reviewed here are so truly tremendously excellent, I can’t not write about them.
Silverlight 4 In Action – This book is comprehensive. I’ve yet to try to find out how to do something (or what library to include, or what I’m missing about some technique) and not found a clear, concise and immediately useful answer. If you can’t find something new, that you didn’t already know in this book then you are on the development team of Silverlight. For the rest of us, Pete fills in the lacunae in our knowledge of Silverlight.
Note, it isn’t just me, there are currently 14 reviews on Amazon, and they are all 5 star (!) Pete has hit a grand slam homerun, ring the bells, alert the media.
Professional Silverlight 4 – Three writers with one voice, this book also covers the gamut of Silverlight programming and their examples are worth their weight in gold. Very heavy on useful illustrations, laid out very well and with solid coverage of advanced topics, this book is the perfect companion to Pete’s… it can be very valuable to see the same thing from two different perspectives.
Professional Windows Phone 7 Application Development – This book is shockingly well done and complete considering it is one of the first on the topic to hit the shelves. The book dives into advanced topics in the first 100 (of ~600) pages, and I do wish the demos were completely stand alone (sometimes I have to back up and implement something I know already just to catch up to the current example) but overall this is an immensely valuable book.
All three are required reading.
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