Petzold's new WPF book, Applications = Code + Markup, is brilliant

I've been meaning to write for some time about Charles Petzold's book on the Windows Presentation Foundation, Applications = Code + Markup.  Early reviews of the book offered glowing praise, so I ordered a copy of my own.

I've read enough of it by now to offer it my highest recommendation.  If you are working with WPF, this book is definitely worth reading and keeping on your desk. 

With so many excellent freely-available resources around, you may wonder why you'd want a book.  Petzold provides the most lucid introduction to WPF concepts that I have found. (Karsten describes him as 'pedagogically brilliant').  As he illustrates each WPF concept and demonstrates its value, Petzold also fits them into a much broader context, drawing on his background as a long-time writer on user interface technologies. 

A challenge for prospective WPF adopters is that there are a lot of ideas to wrap your head around.  Designers, in particular, will need a sense of how concepts like the visual tree and styles and templates and data contexts and so on all fit together, even if they plan to primarily use a design tool like Expression Interactive Designer. 

I suspect that in many organizations, the task will fall to developers to pass much of this knowledge along.  Those developers will need a crisp understanding of the framework (and the value of its components) if they're going to articulate the concepts well.  That's where this book comes in.

I said you should keep it on your desk; the problem is that even though it weighs in at about 1,000 pages, if you work in shared office space, the book is likely to go walking.  Which, when you're ready to get everyone else excited about exploring WPF hands-on, may in fact be a good thing.

[Update: Here are a few facts about the book from Petzold himself.]