Programming Windows Presentation Foundation is an outstanding introduction to the latest technology from Microsoft for building user interface for Windows XP and beyond. It is written by two knowledgeable and trustworthy authors, Chris Sells and Ian Griffiths, in a style that’s easy to follow. I’m going to need some actual experience under my belt before I really “get it,” but this book taught me far more than the online information that I’d read thus far.

It’s difficult to introduce so many new concepts in a linear fashion, so there were a few hiccups. I would like to have learned more about “dependency properties” before chapter 9, as they are really fundamental to the entire programming model of WPF. You might consider reading chapter 9 (“Custom Controls”) immediately after reading chapter 3 (“Controls”). I also would have liked to see more code and less XAML, though that may have made the book much longer for little benefit. At the very least, take their advice and skip ahead to Appendix A to help understand what sort of code the XAML is used to generate.

This book was written for WinFX Beta 1, so be sure to read the errata, as there have been important changes in the most recent releases. If that’s too bleeding-edge for you, feel free to wait until they publish the second edition of the book, after WPF actually ships. On the other hand, the fundamentals of WPF won’t be changing, so this book still provides an excellent introduction to the next wave of user interface programming for Windows. I, for one, am ready to get started! Goodbye GDI, hello WPF!