| Wow. Silverlight has really come a long way since I started using it. It’s kind of interesting to look back a mere two years (roughly) and think about how the workflow has changed. Of even more interest is the staggering speed at which new features are being added. In the time I’ve been using Silverlight, it has grown from a somewhat limited toolset to an ever-more-impressive technology that has really started to come into its own. Silverlight has started to change the way people think about producing rich applications for the Web.
I have found that one of the hardest goals to achieve when writing a book is to not only describe a technique for doing something but to do it in a way that gets the creative juices of the reader flowing.
With that in mind, I tried to go a step beyond the concepts with the example projects and show one or more ways to apply the techniques being described. It isn’t always about new techniques, but it is often about applying existing techniques in new ways. Along those lines, it is often the case that seeing a couple of different applications of a technique will help people start thinking about ways to unlock the ideas that they have had floating around for a while and give them a means to bring their ideas to life.
I think this book can do that for you.
There are nearly 200 example projects included in this book, including both code-along and completed versions that you can take apart, change, and put back together in order to learn how to make the concepts work for you. Don’t get locked into what is being demonstrated, though—find ways to move beyond the examples and apply the concepts in new and interesting ways. This is where your applications will really start to shine.
In the end, the goal of the book is to provide a means to realize your ideas using Silverlight as the technology to deliver them. Have fun. There’s a lot to learn. |