Today, I completed the last chapter in my book, Silverlight in Action Revised Edition by Manning. I have one chapter still in tech review, but authoring the chapters is now complete.

Phew!

The book, before any image resizing or print layout, has ended up at 819 pages. The page count in Word and the book page count are usually in the same ballpark. Add in the intro materials, toc, and index, and we're looking at something in the 850 range. I haven't looked it up, but I'm betting this is the largest Manning book so far. The previous edition came in at 371 pages including index, and I've used maybe 1/2 to 2/3 of that Silverlight 2 content.

I think this is the most comprehensive Silverlight 4 book you can get.

Thanks for the Tech Reviews and Help

I'd like to thank all the people who have taken time to do tech reviews for me:

• Tom McKearney for being my top tech reviewer and for being a stickler for language
• Tad Van Fleet for many chapters of review
• Al Pascual for many chapters of review
• Ben Hayat for WCF RIA Services
• Jeff Handley for WCF RIA Services
• Tim Heuer from Silverlight for helping with the install experience
• Rene Schulte for keeping my pixel shader content honest
• Mike Street on the Manning forums for finding all my coding errors
• As well as scores of people on the Silverlight team who helped with specific questions and reviews, particularly when I got deep into the weeds of how rendering and layout work.

What's Inside

Here's the final table of contents

1. Introducing Silverlight [18 pages]
2. Core XAML [32 pages]
3. The Application Model and the Plug-In [30 pages]
4. Integrating with the Browser [27 pages]
5. Integrating with the Desktop [49 pages]
6. Layout, Rendering, Transforming [39 pages]
7. Panels [19 pages]
8. Human Input [16 pages]
9. Text [37 pages]
10. Controls and UserControls [27 pages]
11. Binding [26 pages]
12. DataGrid and DataForm [25 pages]
13. Validation [29 pages]
14. Networking and Communications [50 pages]
15. Dialogs and Navigation [39 pages]
16. The MVVM/ViewModel Pattern and Testing [46 pages]
17. Introduction to WCF RIA Services [58 pages]
18. Graphics and Effects [29 pages]
19. Printing [35 pages]
20. Displaying and Capturing Media [52 pages]
21. Working with Bitmap Images [25 pages]
22. Animation and Behaviors [38 pages]
23. Styles, Templates, and Resources [31 pages]
24. Creating Panels and Controls [22 pages]
25. Install Experience and Pre-Loaders [11 pages]
26. Appendix A: Data Connection Setup [9 pages]

I've gotten really good feedback on some complex chapters, such as #16 on MVVM and #17 on WCF RIA Services.

Landing this one has been quite an effort. I've literally slept every other night for the past month, and even less in the last week. On the plus side, the humor got better with sleep deprivation :)

So, what's left to do?

I need to write the preface and "About this Book", and I need to respond to all the copy edits. We've already completed all the tech edits and content edits, so it's all spelling, style, and grammar now. I also need to update a few chapter references in the book, and go and number the images I took so they get stuffed in the right spots.

Publication to paper will be end of August, early September. MEAP Subscribers get electronic versions now, so if you're itching to get into Silverlight, go ahead and sign up for the MEAP + Paper or MEAP + Electronic versions at http://manning.com/pbrown