Good intro tutorial book for WPF?

Question

I saw the "Getting started with WPF" thread but its almost two years old now. What are the community's recommendations for good tutorial BOOKS on WPF? (I'm kind of a dead tree documentation kind of guy.)

Related question: I'm a serious career programmer but my relationship with C#.NET is kind of that of a hobbyist. I'm finding the hybrid GUI designer/hack on the XAML approach of VS to WPF kind of frustrating and difficult. Am I crazy to be proceeding without a copy of Blend or something similar? I'm running the free version of VS and that's kind of set my expectations, five hundred bucks seems like a lot to shell out for Blend. IS there something similar that's not five hundred bucks and would make my WPF experience less frustrating?

Thanks,

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Charles

Answer 1

I hope this online training videos will help you to learn fast.
http://expression.microsoft.com/en-us/cc136536.aspx
http://www.wpftutorial.net/
 http://expression.microsoft.com/en-us/cc136535.aspx

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Prasad - www.beautifulmind.blog.co.in
Microsoft MVP

Answer 2

I saw the "Getting started with WPF" thread but its almost two years old now. What are the community's recommendations for good tutorial BOOKS on WPF? (I'm kind of a dead tree documentation kind of guy.)

The fundamentals of WPF haven't changed since then, so I still recommend Adam Nathan's "Windows Presentation Foundation Unleashed" (Sams 2008).

Related question: I'm a serious career programmer but my relationship with C#.NET is kind of that of a hobbyist. I'm finding the hybrid GUI designer/hack on the XAML approach of VS to WPF kind of frustrating and difficult. Am I crazy to be proceeding without a copy of Blend or something similar? I'm running the free version of VS and that's kind of set my expectations, five hundred bucks seems like a lot to shell out for Blend. IS there something similar that's not five hundred bucks and would make my WPF experience less frustrating?

I'm not using Blend at all, but then again I think XAML is the best thing about WPF.  I'm very happy with the hybrid designer of Visual Studio -- I like being able to write GUIs in an HTML-like language, rather than having to awkwardly drag & drop building blocks with the mouse.   WPF is designed from the ground up to be written in XAML, it's the framework's natural language.  WPF is also designed from the ground up for automatic sizing & positioning of most GUI elements, so the greatest advantage of a mouse-driven GUI designer (precise manual sizing & positioning) doesn't really apply.  Ultimately, if you actively hate XAML then I don't think you'll ever like WPF. At least not as a programmer -- I understand Blend is primarily intended for graphics designers who cooperate with programmers working on the XAML/C#/VB source code.

Answer 3

Thanks, Chris. I'm going to pick up that book today or tomorrow, assuming the local B&N has it.

Gosh, I don't hate XAML! I've been programming too long, and have used too many truly awful, awful programming tools to hate XAML. But FWIW (nobody asked) here are the things that I find frustrating about XAML:

1. Lack of documentation PLUS weak Intellisense relative to other VS environments. In C# itself the Help is pretty good and the Intellisense is great. I think a lot of us are doing "hacking by Intellisense." XAML is lacking in tools, IMHO, other than Google (er, Bing). Google and Bing are great, but some top-down-organized documentation on the local hard drive would be even greater.

2. If you like designing GUIs with text, that's great, but I think it's a step backwards. I think WYSIWYG, GUI tools for designing GUIs were a big step forward. If the WPF team wants to make XAML hacking available for those of you who prefer designing GUIs in text, that's great, but I'd like to see every attribute ALSO exposed in the GUI and associated Property window.

Thanks for the advice on Blend. I'm definitely 90% programmer and 10% designer. I'm glad to hear I'm not crippled if I don't shell out five hundred bucks for Blend.

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Charles

Answer 4

I have used Pro WPF in C# (from Apress) and it is pretty hefty. Actually, right now I am going over the XAML documentation from MSDN because in my readings, the books do not/cannot(?) dedicate lots of space on just XAML. In addition, even the MSDN documentation on XAML does not go into great implementation details.

Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 has additional support for XAML Intellisense - but of course you still sort of have have some idea about the syntax to make the best use of it. Another good thing about VS2010 is that you don't have to remember all of the arcane Markup Expression syntax, the properties now come with a more visual method to set these extended properties. I did a blog post on it, not sure if it is what you are looking for [http://sdasrath.blogspot.com/]. Also, check out http://windowsclient.net/ for WPF and Blend videos and labs etc
~sparky