Foreword

“In keeping with the intentions of this book of getting to the heart of the matter—and not wasting your time—I will not review the history of XAML nor the theory of XAML nor will I tell you why XAML is a great markup language. Instead I’ll turn immediately to writing programs for Windows 8 using XAML.” These are the first sentences that you’re going to read when you get to the first chapter of this book. And these sentences tell you everything that you need to know about both this book and the author.

The book tackles the major issues that you’ll need to understand in order to get started if you’re a XAML and C# programmer that wants to get down to business building your first Windows 8 apps. Does it tell you about the new UX requirements? No. Does it teach you C#? No. Does it mess around with unnecessary editorials on the importance of Windows 8 in rebooting the developer ecosystem with 400M pairs of eyeballs (800M eyeballs altogether) looking for your apps? No! It assumes that you’ve done your share of the umpteen Microsoft marketing presentations that lay out the fluff and are ready to get down to the gruff. He lays out what the tools are, how to use them, and how to sling the code you need to do on Windows 8: using the project templates in both Visual Studio and Blend, making something useful appear on the screen, binding your data to your controls, laying out your data on the screen, styling your data, and animating the display of your data.

Is it the whole story? No. That would take 800 pages. This is the first 100 pages you need to get started.

And what about the author? Is he qualified to decide on your first 100 pages? Absolutely.

Jesse Liberty is known for doing some of the most popular of everything he does: writing, speaking, podcasting. And he specializes in communicating all things XAML, including WPF, Silverlight, Windows Phone 7, and now Windows 8/XAML. Telerik was proud to hire him at the beginning of 2012 and we’re jealous of the time you get from him writing this book (luckily he decided to give up sleeping while writing this book or we’d be really upset). He’s one of those guys that gets talked about in hushed tones, “You get to work with Jesse Liberty? What’s he really like?”

You have in your hands the first 100 pages you need from the man that’s best able to give it to you. Enjoy.

Chris Sells
Vice President, Developer Tools
[email protected]
http://sellsbrothers.com