IanG on Tap

Since the start of 2002, I’ve had at least one book project on the go. So it’s with some relief that for the first time in over half a decade, I am officially not writing a book: I finally have a copy of my fourth book, the second edition of Programming WPF, co-written by Chris Sells and me.

How different is the second edition from the first? I think the little pictures at the tops of the book spines tell their own story:

If you prefer numbers to pictures, the 1st edition’s highest page number is 430, while the 2nd edition goes up to 835*. In other words, it’s almost double the size.

Moreover, all the content from the first edition was thoroughly revised, partly due to changes between beta 1 and the released version of WPF, but also because I’ve acquired rather more real life experience with WPF in between the two editions. That combined with the fact that I wrote a slightly higher proportion of the total book this time round (it was about half and half last time) meant that this second edition was a much bigger project than writing the first edition, even though we wrote that from scratch!

I’m reliably informed that Amazon US are shipping it right now. Their web site certainly claims to have it in stock. (Amazon UK doesn’t yet, but presumably will do very soon.)

If you read our book, I hope you enjoy it.

*In case you’re wondering why Amazon is quoting 863 pages, that’s the full total, including the front matter (pages i to xxv, including the table of contents and preface), the colophon, an invitation to the Safari online book service, and a bonus blank page between the index and colophon, for you to use as you see fit.