Silverlight 4 Unleashed [Paperback]

Printed entirely in color, with helpful figures and syntax coloring to make code samples appear as they do in Visual Studio and Expression Blend!

Using Silverlight 4, you can build richer and more powerful applications than ever before, and deploy them seamlessly in browsers, on desktop computers, and even on Windows Phone 7. In Silverlight 4 Unleashed, Microsoft Silverlight MVP Laurent Bugnion covers everything you need to do all this, and much more.

The only full-color, example-rich guide to Silverlight 4 for experienced Microsoft developers, Silverlight 4 Unleashed illuminates the entire development process: from installing Silverlight tools to building great user experiences, managing data to optimizing application performance.

You’ll master core Silverlight features such as controls and properties; communicating with web services; efficiently creating data-oriented line-of-business applications; working with external frameworks, and more. Bugnion concludes by showing how to use advanced features such as 3D-like effects and multitouch to deliver an even smoother, richer experience.

• Install and use Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio
• Extend Silverlight applications with user and custom controls
• Group, sort, filter, page, bind, and validate data
• Take full advantage of the Model-View-ViewModel Pattern in Silverlight
• Access Web resources and services
• Control the application’s appearance with resources, styles, templates, and Expression Blend
• Sketch user experience and build iterative prototypes by easily getting feedback from end users
• Create data-oriented applications more easily with the WCF RIA Services framework
• Adapt Silverlight desktop applications for Windows Phone 7
• Integrate effects and media into your applications
• Use Unity, MEF, and the MVVM Light Toolkit to write more maintainable, extensible software
• Optimize performance by reducing download size and memory footprint, and increasing execution speed

Laurent Bugnion works as a senior user-experience integrator for IdentityMine, one of the leading companies committed to redefining the user experience and a Microsoft Gold Partner dedicated to easing the adoption and optimal use of Microsoft presentation technologies, including Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Silverlight, Windows Phone 7, Surface, and Windows 7.

Originally an electronics engineer, Laurent achieved postgrad credentials in software engineering in 1999. Before IdentityMine, he worked for Siemens for 13 years, introducing WPF and other .NET 3.5 technologies worldwide. His responsibilities involved developing with the previously mentioned technologies, training and coaching his colleagues, coordinating and integrating the graphic-design work, and fostering relationships with Microsoft. Before that, he wrote embedded C/C++, and then moved to desktop computers in Java, JavaScript, and eventually .NET (desktop and ASP.NET).

Privately, he codes in Silverlight, WPF, and ASP.NET. He blogs on http://blog.galasoft.ch and writes on http://www.galasoft.ch, where he publishes articles, prototypes, and demos related to the previously mentioned technologies. In 2008, he earned an MCTS for WPF. (In October of that same year, his book Silverlight 2 Unleashed was published.) This year, 2010, is his fourth year as a Microsoft MVP (Silverlight), and he was selected this year as Silverlight MVP of the year.

Laurent is based in Zurich, Switzerland, where he lives with his wife, Chi Meei, and his two daughters, Alise and Laeticia.