Pro WPF in C# 2008: Windows Presentation Foundation with .NET 3.5 Book Review

I have the first edition of this book (Pro WPF: Windows Presentation Foundation in .NET 3.0), so I was hesitant in buying this version. WPF 3.5 did not have major feature upgrades from 3.0. I am glad that I did buy it, but I can’t really recommend doing so for other people with the .NET 3.0 version, only because there is not that much new material. However, I highly recommend the book if you don’t own the previous edition. I also highly recommend it even if you have the first one and you are like me and pretty much trashed my first edition copy. It has been through several storms and has a lot of notes and ink running all over it. So it is nice to have a new copy to beat the crap out of. I also like having the latest information I am using up to date. Here is what is new in this release: --Firefox support for XBAPs. --Data binding support for LINQ. --Data binding support for IDataErrorInfo. --Support for placing interactive controls (such as buttons) inside a RichTextBox control. --Support for placing 2-D elements on 3-D surfaces. --An add-in model. Matthew has added content for all the topics listed above. Some of the highlights of the book I like: --His in-depth coverage of printing. --His Custom Elements chapter. --The new chapter on Application Add-Ins. --The chapter on using ClickOnce with WPF. --Everything is gone into in depth. This is not a brush over the topic book. --The usability of the code makes the book all that much more valuable. The book focuses on WPF only. It has a few pages on LINQ, but that is about it as far as the rest of the .NET 3.5 framework goes. In other words, the book does not cover how to best use WPF in relationship to WCF, WF, or LINQ. This does not take anything away from the book because Matthew does not claim that the book does this. I only mention it because his ASP.NET 3.5 book does go into LINQ application integration. The downloadable code is very well organized and is very usable. I highly recommend this book to anyone getting into WPF with .NET 3.5.