This book is designed for developers who plan to get the
MCTS certification on WPF. It covers all fundamentals needed to build client applications
with WPF.
WPF changes the way of designing the user interface while offering a wide range
of new functionalities and powerful features, but also requires learning many
new "rules" and declarative programming with Xaml, that might
initially discourage a WinForm developer. Once you learn the Xaml's basics, it
will be easier for an ASP.net developer who is accustomed to write markup code.
The effort will be rewarded for sure.
The book is organized in 10 chapters. Chapter 1 introduces the different kinds
of applications that can be built with WPF: Windows Applications, Navigation
Applications and XBAPs, explaining the pro and the cons of each one. Chapter 2
is one of most interesting because it introduces real new concepts like event
routing and commands that could simplify the design of complex interfaces.
Chapter 3 is an overview of WPF controls with the introduction of a new
templating and layout management features. Chapter 4 is about graphics and
multimedia content, also discovering how to manage binary resources and images.
Chapter 5 is also another must read chapter, it is all about new data binding
mechanism in WPF and explains how to bind to different sources like ADO.net
objects, custom objects and xml. This chapter also describes the new Data
Templates feature.
Chapter 6 introduces data conversion and validation. Chapter
7 is about how-to modify controls appearance with styles and enhance the
interface with animations. Chapter 8 describes how to reuse Windows forms
controls in WPF applications and how to create custom templates, WPF user
controls and custom controls. Chapter 9 is very interesting because explains
how to manage resources, how to create and manage XPS Documents, describes the
new enhanced printing feature and finally how to deal with localization,
suggesting best practice to localize WPF applications. Chapter 10 is about
deployment, it explains the different options available to bring WPF
applications on the user's PC, but focusing more on ClickOnce because is the
preferred technology for WPF deployment.
Conclusions
I strongly recommend this book, its content is easily readable and flowing.
Tips are added in each lesson, pointing to which are the concepts that will
most likely to be asked during the exam. Each fundamental topic and new
features introduced with WPF are clearly explained, but also a working
experience in Windows application development with c# or vb.net is needed. The
companion CD includes code samples, question review for each chapter and also a
practice test that simulates the exam.