Lucas Moffitt

Everyone likes something that is simple. But people often get confused as to what’s simple and what’s hard, often without even looking at it.

Laurence Moroney takes the seemingly difficult and turns it into Lego blocks that even the most confused developers can understand.

“Introducing Microsoft Silverlight 3” makes it easy.

With his help and this book you can:

• Create your first simple sites
• Build applications that run out of the browser
• Use XAML to render, scale, and animate graphics on-screen
• Work with Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio
• Explore core and advanced controls—and build your own
• Exploit new graphics support—3-D effects, H.264 video, GPU acceleration
• Experiment with media, ink, DeepZoom, and Photosynth
• Access data services to build connected applications
• Dynamically add content using Ruby and Python
• Manage Silverlight applications from ASP.NET–based servers
• Learn how to deliver DRM-protected video content

This book is best aimed at those who are new to Silverlight and are interested in learning about what it is and how it works, those if you who are seasoned professionals most probably wont take anything away from it.

I personally think sketchflow is the greatest invention since sliced bread. But that may just be me.

Regardless of that it’s a great way to get into Silverlight 3 and the cool new features of Expression Studio (Available to Students for free by the way @ Dreamspark)

Lucas

Visit – http://www.mspress.com.au today

Thanks to my friends at MSPress i have a copy of Microsoft SQL Server 2008: Step By Step by Mike Hotek to give away. I wrote a review a while back on it which you can find here

The conditions are simple. Post your name in the comments section, at 9pm Monday the first of February 2010, I’ll use a random number generator to pick a winner. simple as that.

You also must be a student or faculty member at the University of Newcastle, TAFE or a local High school and must provide proof before you can claim it

Goodluck!

Lucas

This is a great book for begging SQL Server, not programming. There’s confusion in the text between some programming methods and their actual SQL application. If you’re looking for programming with SQL Yeah not so much. But if you’re looking to work with SQL server as a whole then this is pretty much the bees knees.

Mike takes great masses of information and compresses them down into manageable blocks, allowing even the silliest of the dullards can understand the core concepts.

I’ve read other SQL books and SQL server books, and the one thing lacking from them that was evident here was the organized approach in which the content is delivered. That includes everything like information about the actual tools you can use and even business intelligence and SQL server integration.

As always there’s an EBook version and a resource kit on the attached CD which made things a lot easier.

Only down side of the book proved that some of the scripts failed to work correctly. A quick skim through the resource cd and the previous chapters was more than enough to go back and ensure that the script was fixed.

Overall on the scale of helpfulness this is right up there with a 8. Its great for “newbs”!

So go now and get yourself a copy of this book from our friends at MS Press:

Click Here for the book!

Click Here for MS Press!

Lucas!

Do you honestly have any clue as to how big a book is at 1040 pages? Well MS Press does because they’ve printed it. The Self Paced Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 – Asp.net Application Development Training Kit is a behemoth of a book. I mean this thing is huge.

But that doesn’t mean it has to be read all at once. Like a lecturer once told me, “How do you eat an elephant?… A little bit at a time”, While it’s probably the lamest thing you’ll ever hear it is true. While it’s a huge book, everything is broken down into tiny bite sized pieces which are small enough for everyone to grasp. This is especially good for people on the go who  can’t afford to spend 2 hours reading or more than about half an hour. This way you can read a part. give it a go, then walk away and continue later.

Each chapter has a handy review for you at the end and a summary allowing you to go back and complete study notes!

The training kit is exactly that, it’ trains you for the Exam. Everything you’ll need to know for the exam is within this book, so it’ll still be useful even after you pass your exam as a handy reference guide.

And don’t be worried about the exam. The handy CD attached allows you do complete practice tests and includes all the sourcecode for the lessons.

The Resource CD also contains an eBook version of the book so you can take it with you when carting it around becomes an issue.

All in all this book is just about the exam, it just tells you everything you need for the exam. If you’re after a comprehensive breakdown of all the asp.net features then perhaps further books are required. If you just want to pass your exam, This is for you.

I highly recommend it and the others in the Training Kit Series as i head towards my MCTS exam during the University holidays!

Head over to www.mspress.com.au and pick yourself up a copy now.

tldnr: Go buy this book! www.mspress.com.au

Edit!

Thanks to my friends at MS Press i now have another copy of this book to give away!

Put a comment with your name here and attend my Event on Campus (Information to come) and I’ll random it off to one of those people on the day of the event!

Happy Posting!