Avalon (I mean WPF) book recommendations?

I'm looking for a recommendation for a good Avalon book.

Which one do you like, and why?

Comments

• Anonymous
  September 15, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  September 15, 2006
  http://www.charlespetzold.com/wpf/
  
  It's fantastic, Petzold really knows how to teach API's.
  
  On the other hand, I'd avoid the O'Reilly book (Programming Windows Presentation Foundation by Sells & Grifiths.) It was obviously pushed out to be the "first" rather than useful.

• Anonymous
  September 15, 2006
  Petzold's book is really incredible and a pleasure to read.
  
  I strongly recommand it to all WPF developers :)

• Anonymous
  September 15, 2006
  I've heard lots of good things regarding Petzold's book too.  Would have brought it, but got other books on my reading list atm

• Anonymous
  September 15, 2006
  Hi Eric.. I have research and found some interesting books:
  
  Application = Code + markup
  
  Presenting Windows Workflow Foundation (Paperback)
  
  Professional WinFX Beta: Covers "Avalon" Windows Presentation Foundation and "Indigo" Windows Communication Foundation
  
  Programming Windows Presentation Foundation
  
  XAML in a Nutshell
  
  I will be posting more on my site as i found them.
  
  http://www.xamldev.com
  
  Hope this can help
  
  Regards.!!
  

• Anonymous
  September 15, 2006
  Another vote for Petzold here. It's fun but most importantly of all I haven't found any errors in it yet. The code can be typed in as you follow along and it just works. None of which is true of most of the other books I've bought over the last year.
  
  I wish I could find an equally good book on WCF

• Anonymous
  September 15, 2006
  There are only 4 in print:
   Petzold's
   XAML In a Nutshell
   Programming Windows Presentation Foundation
   Pro WinFX beta
  Petzold's is excellent--even better than classis Petzold.
  
  The other 3 are so badly out of date that they are worthless.

• Anonymous
  September 17, 2006
  The Programming Windows Presentation Foundation is one of the worst books ever published.  Avoid that.
  
  With that one rule you can lucky-dip any other book and be safe.  Petzold is OK, but it has almost no screeenshots, so it's usefulness is limited.
  
  I'm waiting for Chris A.'s (simplegeek.com) book... I'v ebeen buying these books and am constantly disappointed.

• Anonymous
  September 17, 2006
  Wow!  I'm slightly amazed to see such negative comments about Chris Sells and my book - Programming Windows Presentation Foundation.
  
  I'm quite happy to admit that it's now out of date - it's over a year old, and that's the inevitable result of getting it out for beta 1.
  
  We will of course be releasing an update fairly soon after WPF ships.
  
  As it happens, conceptually most of it is still up to date - only the animation system has undergone major conceptual revisions since the book shipped. So I'd say the animation chapter is now not worth reading, but the rest of it has, I think, held up much better that I expected when we wrote it.
  
  Of course lots of little details have changed. But that's why we've been pushing out updates to the examples, and a change list online.
  
  If John Coleman or squidbot are following this thread, I'd love to know what you thought was so bad about Programming Windows Presentation Foundation.
  
  On Amazon.com, we 27 out of the 28 reviews give it 5 stars. The one that gave it only 2 stars did so specifically because it's out of date. (And he appeared not to have bothered looking for updated samples.)
  
  Believe it or not, this is the first time I've had any negative feedback regarding anything other than it being out of date. So I'm really hoping John Coleman and/or squidbot will be more specific about what they don't like about it. We're writing the next edition right now, so this is an ideal time for feedback.

• Anonymous
  September 17, 2006
  I have partially read Chris/Ian's book Programming Windows Presentation Foundation and like it a lot. I'd highly recommend it.
  
  I have not read Petzolds book, but I do follow his blog and from the XAML only samples he has put up, it looks like a interesting book....

• Anonymous
  September 19, 2006
  >>> Wow!  I'm slightly amazed to see such negative comments about Chris Sells and my book - Programming Windows Presentation Foundation. <<<
  
  Ian: here's one thumbs up vote for your book. It's not as good as Petzold's, but it can't be labeled as bad under any circumstances.
  
  It is out of date, but the way the topic is presented to the reader is quite good. I wasn't even able to tell which chapter was "yours" and which was Chris', so job well done on the unification of writing style.

• Anonymous
  September 19, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  September 19, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  September 21, 2006
  I actually better like the book from Sells/Griffith. It has more graphics in it, so it is easier to follow what the code is suposed to do. I'm current reading Petzold's book, and it's also very, very good, but it miss drawings and graphics at key points in the book.

• Anonymous
  September 23, 2006
  I've read a decent amount of Petzold's Applications = Code + Markup now, and from what I have read of it, I recommend it. Although after seeing the lengthy defense of his book, I may have to check out Ian's as well. :-)

• Anonymous
  December 30, 2007
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• Anonymous
  January 03, 2008
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