How do you learn WPF and Silverlight?

Question

I've been doing some WPF development for the last few months, and I've recently started Silverlight development.

Most of the time things go OK, especially for the simple stuff, but frequently I get stumped by seemingly simple things - especially in XAML. As an example, yesterday I was trying to use a Grid to lay out the items in a ListBox. This worked, but I couldn't get the grid to stretch to fill the width of the ListBox. Only after some hours of searching, forum posts, and experimentation was I able to get it working, but I can't say I have it figured out.

So, my question is how do you learn WPF or Silverlight? - XAML in particular, really. What techniques do you use to understand how controls achieve what they do on the screen, how they are structured, etc. Is there something I'm missing?

Really, this is a major sticking point, and something that Microsoft needs to address to get the hordes of developers up and running with WPF/Silverlight efficiently!

Answer 1

Bill Steele, from Microsoft, has a multi-part webcast series that takes you from the absolute beginning of WPF. I think there are something like 15 episodes. You should be able to find it at Microsoft events by searching WPF Soup To Nuts.