Programming .NET 3.5 Book Review

I waited a very long time for this book's release. I wrote this blog about it over a year ago and had been waiting for sometime at that point. This book is very different than most of the book I have purchased on .NET because it covers XAML, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Silverlight, Ajax, Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), Workflow Foundation (WF), CardSpace, as well as the industry standard patterns Microsoft has incorporated in these technologies. None of the technologies are gone into in great depth, and I thought I would be slamming them for that, but I can't because they tell us upfront they don't do that. I also can't do that because they did a great job of making this a roller coaster ride through the .NET 3.5 Framework. Meaning they point out some really cool stuff in one part of it, and then speed off to another part of it to show off the cool stuff there. I would suggest you have somewhat of a background with .NET 3.5. You don't have to, but it helped me because I could easily place the book's topics into the proper context. The authors do a good job introducing some of the key patterns found in the .NET Framework. It is the same as the rest of the book, they look at one cool view of the pattern and then speed off to the next one. The code samples shown in the book are available online, and they are well organized and very usable. All in all I have enjoyed reading the book. I would recommend this book to anyone who has been trying to get a grip on all the different features in .NET 3.5. They will get a cool glimpse into each area.