Traditionally, programming books were built to emulate teaching courses. This made them well suited for people who wanted to learn the whole platform on a step by step basis, but made finding specific content difficult.
Cookbooks like the one which is subject off this review take a different approach. They provide groups of recipies which provide worked solutions for.common problems faced by developers.
The authors courses to start their book by looking at the basics of Windows Phone Seven development. This group of record intensives the platform as whole, and also explains the xaml used for generating a basic page.
After that, Silverlight GUI programming is explained in considerable detail. The authors also cover Expression blend in some detail.
The chapters 5 and 6 look at sensors and the interpretation of touchscreen gestures. After rhat, the multimedia facilities of the OS are explained in a group of recipies, as is the isolated syorage subsystem.
The two final chapters look at networking and testing. Even though no Mango-specific features are treated, the book does a good gob at explaining the features.
Finally, a single recipe explains the MVVM pattern. Unit testing is handled in another.
Unfortunately, it looks like the editing process for this book was cut short for some reason. While the first three chapters were use well readable, later chapters were missing words and sometimes fealty unedited. However, the text remains understandable even for non native speakers.
In the end, thjs tome is ideal for all those who tend to be in the learning-by-doing camp. The multitude of recipies ensures that most of the features of WP7 get covered – the price of 28USD is justified.
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