Pro WPF and WCF Step by Step Book Reviews

I should note that both of these reviews are from the perspective of an seasoned and experienced technologist. Your mileage may vary based on the knowledge your background and personal experiences...

Pro WPF in C# 2008: Windows Presentation Foundation with .NET 3.5 Second Edition - Matthew MacDonald

This book is a fairly easy, albiet long read. Coming from a web development background this book provides a solid introduction to to all things WPF. A few of my comments:

- Excellent introduction to the underlying foundation of WPF
- Excellent coverage of Xaml
- Good sections on documents, printing, add-ins and custom elements
- In my experience in the corporate development world I have never seen a business app with either animation or 3-d imaging (yeah...I know its used somewhere), which is why I struggled to understand the long, long, long winded sections on animation and 3D topics

Between this book and the MeasureUp practice exams I was able to passed the WPF certification exam, with no prior WPF experience. (And for those that are wondering...the book is a significantly better exam prep than the MeasureUp practice questions were.)

Microsoft Windows Communication Foundation Step by Step - John Sharp

This book was a very quick read (took less than 2 days to read through) and does little more that introduce WCF. The exercises are contrived and provide little real-world value. The highlights of the book are really the chapters on security. If your looking for something more granualar than an introductory overview I would search out a different book.