Programming WPF, 2nd Edition

Chris's Acknowledgments

I'd like to thank the following people, without whom I wouldn't have been able to write either the first or second edition of this book:

The readers. When you've got a story to tell, you've got to have someone to tell it to. I've been writing about WPF in various forums for almost four years and the readers have always pushed and encouraged me further.

My coauthor, Ian Griffiths. Ian has an extensive background in all things graphical and video-related, including technologies so deep I can't understand him half the time. This, in addition to his vast experience teaching the WPF course and writing real-world WPF applications, along with his wonderful writing style, made him the perfect coauthor on this book. I couldn't have asked for better.

Shawn Wildermuth, for the cutting-edge Silverlight appendix. Shawn's been doing a bunch of advanced Silverlight work, so when I asked him to add his knowledge to this book, he graciously agreed, completely unaware of the buzz saw that is the Griffith/Sells reviewing process. Sorry, Shawn, and thanks!

Kenny Kerr, for his most excellent Window Clippings tool. His tool, plus the features he added at my request, saved me countless hours of work and produced much higher-quality screenshots than I would've normally had the patience to capture.

Chango Valtchev and Michael Weinhardt, for their huge help on navigation and the pitfalls thereof. The material in Chapter 11 was influenced very much by Chango and Michael.

Microsoft employees and contractors (in the order in which I found them in my WPF email folder): Mark Lawrence, Robert Wlodarczyk, Hua Wang, Worachai Chaoweeraprasit, Preeda Ola, Varsha Mahadevan, Larry Golding, Benjamin Westbrook, Ben Constable, Brian Chapman, Niklas Borson, Ryan Molden, Hamid Mahmood, Lauren Lavoie, Lars Bergstrom, Amir Khella, Kevin Kennedy, David Jenni, Elizabeth Nelson, Beatriz de Oliveira Costa, Nick Kramer, Allen Wagner, Chris Sano, Tim Sneath, Steve White, Matthew Adams, Eli Schleifer, Karsten Januszewski, Rob Relyea, Mark Boulter, Namita Gupta, John Gossman, Kiran Kumar, Filipe Fortes, Guy Smith, Zhanbo Sun, Ben Carter, Joe Marini, Dwayne Need, Brad Abrams, Feng Yuan, Dawn Wood, Vivek Dalvi, Jeff Bogdan, Steve Makofsky, Kenny Lim, Dmitry Titov, Joe Laughlin, Arik Cohen, Eric Stollnitz, Pablo Fernicola, Henry Hahn, Jamie Cool, Sameer Bhangar, and Brent Rector. I regularly spammed a wide range of my Microsoft brethren and instead of snubbing me, they answered my email questions, helped me make things work, gave me feedback on the chapters, sent me additional information without an explicit request, and in the case of John Gossman, forwarded the chapters along to folks with special knowledge so that they could give me feedback. This is the first book I've written "inside," and with the wealth of information and conscientious people available, it'd be very, very hard to go back to writing "outside."

The external technical reviewers, who provide an extremely important mainstream point of view that Microsoft insiders can't: Craig Andera, Chris Anderson, Elsa Bartley, Patrick Cauldwell, Dennis Cheng, Arik Cohen, Beatriz de Oliveira Costa, Ryan Dawson, Glyn Griffiths, Scott Hanselman, Karsten Januszewski, Adam Kinney, Drew Marsh, Nikola Mihaylov, Mark Miller, Dave Minter, Brian Noyes, Eric Stollnitz, and Jeff Tentschert.

Glyn Griffiths, not just for raising Ian right, but also for his eagle eye as the last reviewer of what we thought was the "final" manuscript. Not only did he catch a frightening number of grammatical errors, but he also pointed out the copyedits from the first edition of the book that we'd failed to reverse-integrate into our Word documents for the second edition. He literally did a three-way diff for us, which was impressive and spooky at the same time . . .

Caitrin McCullough and John Osborn from O'Reilly Media, for supporting me in breaking a bunch of the normal ORA procedures and guidelines to publish the book I wanted.

Shawn Morrissey, for letting me make writing a part of my first two years at Microsoft, and even giving me permission to use some of that material to seed this book. Shawn put up with me, trusting me to do my job remotely when very few Microsoft managers would.

Don Box, for setting my initial writing quality bar and hitting me squarely between the eyes until I could clear it. Of course, thank you for the foreword and for acting as my soundboard on this preface. You're an invaluable resource and a dear friend.

Barbara Box, for putting me up in the Chez Box clubhouse while I balance work and family in a way that wouldn't be possible without you.

Chris Anderson, architect on WPF, for his foreword and a ton of illuminating conversations even after he wrote a competing book. Chris is a very generous man. After I'd reviewed the first chapter of his book and realized that reading it was giving me insights that would affect my own writing, he wouldn't let me stop. He cared most about getting the right story out there, and not at all about into which book it went.

Michael Weinhardt, as the primary developmental editor on both editions of this book. His feedback is probably the single biggest factor in whatever quality we've been able to cram in. As if that wasn't enough, he produced many of the figures in my chapters. (Ian, as a rule, is far more industrious than I.)

Tim Ewald, for that critical eye at the most important spots in the first edition.

My wife and sons. The first edition was the first book I've ever written while holding a full-time job and, worse than that, while I was learning a completely new job. Frankly, I neglected my family pretty thoroughly for about three solid months on the first edition and nearly six months on the second, but they understood and supported me, like they have all of my endeavors over the years. I am very much looking forward to getting back to them (again).