WPF is.... just wow....

[mph_Ragnarok]

Windows Presentation Foundation is the most amazing thing ever. I can't believe how easy making a Windows application just got. I just came from 3 months of some hardcore win32 studying... and by comparison WPF is just amazing.


Anyways, the real topic of discussion:

Would any of you gerbils mind recommending a good book on WPF? I have the Petzold book on win32 and I was hoping for something equally awesome for WPF.

[bdwilcox]

I haven't even looked at WPF so I might as well ask; is it more drag and drop programming, aka Visual Basic, or is there real coding involved?

[dmjifn]

@OP:
Good luck there. Petzold does have a WPF book. I don't think there are any widely acclaimed WPF bibles yet, though. WPF is still pretty new in the grand scheme. My team recently evaluated WPF and we didn't find that the books went deep enough to help us tackle what we wanted to accomplish. We just had to dig in ourselves and ask more experienced people on a case-by-case basis.

You may have already done this but, if I were trying to help a winforms programmer pick up WPF, here is what I would have them do:
1. Read the Josh Smith MVVM article and accept MVVM as your new way of life.
2. Watch the Jason Dolinger video (http://blog.lab49.com/archives/2650)
3. Keep things simple and straightforward, even if it seems tedious. I'd stick to INotifyPropertyChanged and avoid DependencyProperty, for instance.
4. Start writing some toy apps until you know what's going on. Apps like a kitchen timer simulator or Windows Calculator or Notepad.


@bdwilcox:
Programming with WPF can be drag-and-drop if you want it to be. Else, it's a lot like writing GUIs in a desktop dialect of HTML, then mating them up to your program's objects with XPath.
That video is pretty illustrative.

[Flying Fox]

Windows Presentation Foundation is the most amazing thing ever. I can't believe how easy making a Windows application just got. I just came from 3 months of some hardcore win32 studying... and by comparison WPF is just amazing.

Told you so. A few of us have been telling you to forget Win32 since a few threads ago.

[wibeasley]

I've read the first three chapters of the new WPF book by Matthew MacDonald. I've read two of his other books, and they're pretty good. When I was reading it last week, I actually thought about your previous Win32 threads.

Petzold does have a WPF book.

Make sure you get a book for the newest version of WPF (the most recent Petzold book I see is 4 years old). The 3.5/2008 version lacked some a few useful things like DataGrids.

[Flying Fox]

I've read the first three chapters of the new WPF book by Matthew MacDonald. I've read two of his other books, and they're pretty good. When I was reading it last week, I actually thought about your previous Win32 threads.

Petzold does have a WPF book.

Make sure you get a book for the newest version of WPF (the most recent Petzold book I see is 4 years old). The 3.5/2008 version lacked some a few useful things like DataGrids.

So is Petzold's still the reference or there is a changing of the guard about who writes the best new Windows GUI programming book?

[wibeasley]

So is Petzold's still the reference or there is a changing of the guard about who writes the best new Windows GUI programming book?

I imagine it changed a while ago, but I'm not qualified to say. I've really liked the two WinForms books by Chris Sells (ie, the .NET, pre-WPF, forms). He has a WPF book, but I stopped reading it early when I realized WPF didn't have a DataGrid (without a third-party tool).