Have you ever read a programming book and immediate discovered the answers to a dozen mysteries that had been bothering you? That happened to me yesterday when I opened up Silverlight 1.0 Unleashed, by Adam Nathan (Sams, 2007, 272 pp., $39.99, ISBN 978-0-672-33007-0). Adam is the senior developer who originally built Popfly with Silverlight, working with John Montgomery. (His team has since gotten a little larg Have you ever read a programming book and immediate discovered the answers to a dozen mysteries that had been bothering you? That happened to me yesterday when I opened up Silverlight 1.0 Unleashed, by Adam Nathan (Sams, 2007, 272 pp., $39.99, ISBN 978-0-672-33007-0). Adam is the senior developer who originally built Popfly with Silverlight, working with John Montgomery. (His team has since gotten a little larger.) Popfly is probably the most complicated product that has been built with Silverlight so far; consequently, Adam knows the ins and outs of Silverlight better than most. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Silverlight 1.0 Unleashed was printed in color, and uses that color effectively. Programming books are usually printed in black and white with grayscale illustrations to keep the cost down. What really impressed me were the non-obvious warnings and tips sprinkled throughout the book: WARNING: Inline XAML doesn’t work in Firefox unless the DOCTYPE element is removed! WARNING: The Boolean used for isWindowless must be specified as a string! FAQ: How can I provide text input or editing functionality within my Silverlight content? (Use an HTML INPUT element positioned over windowless Silverlight 1.0 content.) That’s the kind of advice, born of hands-on experience, that can make the difference between a project that you complete on time and under budget, and a project that drags on forever and turns into a black hole for resources. If you’re working on Silverlight 1.0 projects, you need this book. Software Development