This is the Safari online edition of the printed book.

Microsoft Silverlight is a leading cross-platform, Rich Internet Application (RIA) technology that allows you to create more compelling and interactive Web experiences than are possible with simple HTML browser pages. Silverlight 3 includes significant improvements over previous versions, including “out-of-browser” operation, H.264 video, 3D graphics, and real-time effects.

Essential Silverlight 3 is the definitive reference and insider’s guide. It not only covers all the key features of the Silverlight 3 runtime and how to use them but, in Under the Hood sections, explains why each feature was developed and how each one works. These “insider” explanations often lead to concise, practical performance tips that can help you speed up your own Silverlight applications.

Author Ashraf Michail is uniquely qualified to explain Silverlight 3. He is a Microsoft Silverlight architect who has guided Silverlight from its beginnings through the current version. In this book, he shows how to 

• Integrate the principles and components of a Silverlight application, including XAP, XAML, and .NET code

• Use Silverlight vector graphics, bitmap images, and animation

• Display predictable and readable text across platforms and animate text elements

• Obtain mouse and keyboard input, including mouse wheel events

• Implement smooth animations to improve your user interface and make your application more pleasing to the user

• Use the Canvas, StackPanel, Grid, and Border elements to lay out your application and define custom layout elements

• Play high-quality, live, and on-demand video and audio

• Customize the built-in and toolkit controls and develop new custom Silverlight controls

• Connect to and synchronize with data using Silverlight Data Binding

• Use built-in real-time effects and define custom HLSL pixel shaders

• Enable GPU-accelerated rendering 

If you are a developer who is getting started with Silverlight or an expert Silverlight developer who is interested in understanding the inner workings of the Silverlight runtime, this book is for you.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 6 Ratings

Not the essentials of SL *3* - 2009-10-19
Reviewer Rating:
This book was a big disappointment.
Microsoft built a lot of new stuff into SL3 targeting business applications.
SL is an interesting alternative for building B2C and B2B apps beginning with release 3.
After watching a lot of the tutorial videos on the SL homepage I expected to get material that at least touches most of the new features.
That's not the case.
Are you looking for information regarding the new Datagrid & Dataform control, Pagers, AutoCompleteBox, ChildWindows, how how to interact with data services (SOAP, WCF, binary encoding), cross domain policies, out of browser clients, merge external style templates, interaction with DOM/Javascript, interaction with Blend 3 etc? You won't find it here.
This book is mainly about drawing stuff that was already there in SL1 & SL2: lines, circles, brushes, animations, videos, layout, effects etc.
It doesn't even scratch the surface of what the SL3/toolkit bundle adds on top.

Very superficial for my taste - 2009-10-22
Reviewer Rating:
This book was a dissapointment for me, i expected something special, but it shows you how to draw and do some stuff with the UI, but it touches superficially the animations, WCF services (only way to get to a database) is not there. How to create converters, or your own custom controls, isolated storage, deep zoom, the new navigation all of that is missing and more.

The PRO Silverlight 3 with C# is much more complete and all around book.

Definitely 5 stars - 2009-10-18
Reviewer Rating:
I did not keep knowledge of Silverlight up to date after Silverlight 2.0, so when I had do a project where there was potential to use Silverlight, I headed to the bookstore. I scanned through the available SIlverlight 3 books and this book came across as most promising. Things that immediately caught my attention: Scott Guthrie's foreword and under the hood sections.

From my perspective, the good things about the book are:

1. It is easy to read. My style of reading is to quickly read entire books in the first pass to grasp the key points quickly and I found that this book is perfectly suited for my style.

2. The coverage is excellent. It covers all aspects of SIlverlight at the appropriate depth. I never found the book chatty.

3. Under the hood sections are extremely valuable. For instance, you will learn about the frame rate in silverlight and how you can use that to debug the bottlenecks in your application.

Required reading for Silverlight 3.0 Developers - 2009-10-08
Reviewer Rating:
I am a Developer Evangelist for Microsoft (so I am continually educating developers in new technologies). This books is a 'must read' for .NET Silverlight 3.0 Developers. It not only contains the 'what', 'why' and 'how' of SL 3 development, but also, critically the 'under the hood' sections dive deep into the 'why we made it this way' and 'how you can/should best use' the features we've implemented.

The author is on the product team and has a strong graphics development background. This background shows in the detailed, yet clear explainations throughout the book.

Worth reading - 2009-10-19
Reviewer Rating:
The book is a great guide to most of the essentials of Silverlight 3.0. I say most because it misses a few key pieces of the puzzle. There is no coverage of services, no coverage of the navigation framework, and very little coverage of the Silverlight Toolkit.

Those points made, the topics covered are covered very well in the context of the essentials. The book is very well written. It is organized in a very logical and clean format.

Most of the essentials books I have read are overly complex, this one is overly simplified, and that makes it a great beginner's text. Just be aware of the missing pieces of the puzzles.

The biggest ding was the "Technical Insight", "Debugging Tip", and "Performance Tip". I'd say one third of them where just observations that you would have to be blind to miss, one third were hints or clues that you have to research further or come to the table with prior knowledge to figure out, and one third were valuable.

I could find no code download, which would have been nice to have for the graphics chapter.

This book had an army of very well know people give it praise. That was the main reason for my purchase. I will ignore praise like this from now on, because most of it was bull.

All in all, the book is excellently written and organized, and the content covered is great. I do recommend buying it, because the dings I mention above of more of a personal preference and may not apply to everyone. The content is definitely worth reading.

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