Category: books

The Dew Review – Windows Presentation Foundation 4.5 Cookbook

I recently gave away two copies of Packt’s new title, Windows Presentation Foundation 4.5 Cookbook. Packt also provided me with an eBook copy to review. I do quite a bit of WPF work at my day job these days, so I was very interested.

WPF 4.5 Cookbook is a great reference guide for mid-to-senior level WPF developers. It is not intended to teach beginners how to get started. It is for those times when experienced developers are facing a task that maybe they don’t do every day and need a quick refresher, or perhaps they’re using a particular technique for the first time. If you have a decent background in any kind of XAML development (Silverlight, WPF, Windows Phone, etc) and you will be working on WPF applications, this book will make a handy desktop companion.

The cookbook pattern is implemented well by the author. Each topic includes an introduction, a step-by-step guide on how to code the solution, an explanation of why to use the technique and how to take it further. Topics covered include layout, controls, styles, data binding, commands in MVVM, graphics/animation, and threading. While some new C# 5.0 and WPF 4.5 topics are covered, much of the book can be used as a guide for previous versions of WPF as well.

I think this book would be useful to almost any WPF developer with at least some experience and heartily recommend it.

 

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Win an eBook – Learn Windows PowerShell 3 in a Month of Lunches, 2nd Ed.

[EDIT: Winners have been chosen and will be notified soon!]

Manning has just released a new PowerShell book, Learn Windows PowerShell 3 in a Month of Lunches, Second Edition by Don Jones & Jeffery Hicks. It is now available in print and eBook form, and you can win one of two eBook copies just by leaving a comment on this post.

Here is the summary from Manning’s site:

Learn Windows PowerShell 3 in a Month of Lunches, Second Edition is an innovative tutorial designed for administrators. Just set aside one hour a day (lunchtime would be perfect) for a month, and you’ll be automating Windows tasks faster than you ever thought possible. You’ll start with the basics… what is PowerShell and what can you do with it. Then, you’ll move systematically through the techniques and features you’ll use to make your job easier and your day shorter.

Just a reminder that multiple comments will not increase your chances of winning, and comments for unregistered users are moderated so your comment may not immediately appear. Deadline to enter is 11:59pm EST on November 13, 2012.

Good luck!

Alvin

 

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The Dew Review – Visual Studio 2010 Best Practices by Peter Ritchie

I was recently given an eBook copy of Peter Ritchie’s new book, Visual Studio 2010 Best Practices, to review. I was excited to receive a copy because it was a title I had been planning to buy anyway. After reading it, I may order a print copy to keep within reach.

7164EN_mockupcover_normalWhen I first read the title, I wondered why they were publishing a Visual Studio 2010 book right before the launch of Visual Studio 2012. I hope this does not turn off any potential customers because the majority of the recommendations Ritchie gives in the book apply to development with both VS 2010 and 2012. And contrary to the book’s title, he doesn’t like to call them best practices.

I call them "recommended practices" instead of "best practices." The superlative "best" implies some degree of completeness. In almost all circumstances, the completeness of these practices has a shelf-life. Some best practices have a very small shelf-life due to the degree to which technology and our knowledge of it changes.

While this is not an introduction to Visual Studio or the .NET Framework, most Visual Studio developers should find this book useful. Those who are less experienced with .NET will be able to take these recommended practices to get into the world of .NET on the right foot. Even those developers who consider themselves experts in Visual Studio will probably find some new nuggets of wisdom.

The practices discussed in the book range from architecture to C# language features to toolsets. Each recommendation is discussed with examples and then distilled down to two statements, a Context and a Practice. Here’s an example around data transfer and messaging:

Context: When dealing with data that needs to be actioned independently and asynchronously.
Practice: Consider command classes.

I enjoyed reading Visual Studio 2010 Best Practices. I recommend reading it cover-to-cover and then keeping it on hand as a reference guide.

 

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