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If you are writing a small app, there are some great tools and techniques in here that
will help you to keep your app from becoming a maintenance liability. If you are develop-
ing a large application with a complex UI, you need something like Prism 4 to keep you
from being overwhelmed by the complexity and the volume of code that can result from
not basing your app on well-defined design patterns and thoroughly tested code to help
you implement those patterns.
This book is another new feature of Prism 4. Previous releases provided great docu-
mentation in a standard Help format, consisting of many short topics with links to related
topics. And while that format is essential when you are writing code and need to look up
little bits and pieces to keep you moving forward, there was a very important phase of
just getting up to speed on Prism and learning the concepts that was being neglected. You
couldn’t read a book, end-to-end, or chapter by chapter to learn the concepts and see
some code to make those concepts clear, because no such book existed (much as I tried
to find the time to write that book myself).
The structure of a good book on a programming technology is inherently different
from good help topics. This book is structured so that you can read it from cover to
cover or just refer to the topics that interest you, without having to be at your computer
as you do so. To supplement the book, the help documentation online has additional
material, including hands-on labs and advanced information about the reference imple-
mentations and QuickStarts. Because the book is available in print and e-book form, you
can take it with you on a plane or to the beach, so that when you do sit down to write
your Prism code, you are immediately productive and past the “What is it and how do I
use it” phase. You can then refer to the online help, hands-on labs, QuickStart topics, and
so on when you are at your computer and using Visual Studio.
Additionally, with this book you get the collective knowledge of the entire team, not
just the perspective of a single or small group of authors. All of the Prism developers and
designers collaborated and contributed to the content you will find in this book. If one
person wrote a portion, several others reviewed, commented, and improved it. However,
you are primarily getting the content from the developers who wrote the features, which
is a rare opportunity. Customers often ask me: “Where is the best place to start learning
about Prism, and how can I use it?” In the past, I had to point them to a fragmented
collection of articles, podcasts, and blog posts. Now I have a simple and easy answer, and
I can point them one place – right here to this book.
Brian Noyes
Chief Architect, IDesign Inc. (www.idesign.net)
Silverlight MVP