Author: Victor Gaudioso
Publisher: friends of ED, 2009
Pages: 368
ISBN: 978-1430219507
Aimed at: That’s a great question
Rating: 2
Pros: Some coverage of Expression Blend 3
Cons: Lightweight; full of bad practices; no real coverage of Silverlight 3 or key Blend 3 techniques
Reviewed by: Dave Wheeler

Silverlight 3 is a hot topic. Expression Blend 3 is a hot topic, and one sorely lacking coverage for many developers. So it would appear that a book that covers both of these technologies, especially if it truly bridges the designer/developer divide, could be great.

This one isn’t.

Gaudioso obviously wrote the book based on beta software, and it shows, with errors and omissions throughout the content. That’s just unfortunate.

What’s unforgivable, on the other hand, is the very poor coverage of the technologies and the very tool that is the core of the book’s title. Where is the coverage of behaviours and triggers, for example? Why does he show you inappropriate coding techniques as a result of missing these things out? The final chapter, for example, completely ignores the fact that Silverlight 3 has a competent navigation framework with support for deep linking, with Gaudioso rolling his own code to do achieve half of the same result.

The mixed approach – a bit of code here, and introduction to classes there, some design aspects elsewhere – ultimately results in a book that is neither useful for developers nor designers.

I generally tend to like books from the friends of ED stable, as they generally hit a high standard. Unfortunately, this is one book that completely misses that mark.

Avoid.