Last time I touched this subject was to recommend Charles Petzold’s book. In fact I said something that I’d like to correct now. I said:

If for some reason you must choose only one book on WPF, you should choose Petzold’s.

A new book arrived that changed my recommendation: Adam Nathan's WPF Unleashed. It does not go as much in depth as Petzold’s but overall, due to the use of color for everything (even source code) and a lot of pictures, it fits the need of most of the developers better.

 

 

 It’s funny how after reading the same kind of criticism on Jeff’s blog (Petzold’s book is dry, we want more screenshots and color), the only thing Charles was able to mutter (at first) was that:

Apparently the battle for the future of written communication is over. Prose is dead. PowerPoint has won.

What a knee-jerk reaction! I definitely never expected this from an accomplished author.

There is no argument here as to whether the content is more important than form. What people as saying is that you can’t have UI book without a single screenshot!

Finally, my overall recommendation still is: if WPF is central to your future work, buy all of the books you can get your hands on, assuming the book got good reviews on the blogs of people whose opinion you respect. Commenting on Charles’ reaction above, Don Box said:

If a given technology is central to what I’m building, I’ll buy many books on the topic based on the principle that I will opportunistically glean value from them at some point.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

Oh and by the way, Chris Anderson’s WPF book is out (he is one of the architects on the WPF team).