Professional Silverlight 4 will introduce developers to the latest release of Microsoft's Silverlight platform and provide them with the knowledge they need to create powerful Rich Interactive Applications (RIA's). The book will focus not only on educating the reader on the capabilities provided by the Silverlight 4 platform, but introduce them to the languages, tools and techniques used to build applications on the platform. It will be written to show the reader what they need to know to take their existing development abilities to the next level and into a new platform.The book will show the capabilities of the Silverlight platform through the use of samples and images demonstrating the use of discrete features of the platform. Samples will be provided in both C# and VB.NET languages. Clear and concise explanatory text will accompany each sample allowing the reader to easily comprehend the concepts being covered, and put them into action. Readers of this book will gain a complete and thorough understanding of the core platforms concepts, as well as advanced platforms concepts. In order to help developers from other .NET platforms more easily transition to Silverlight, where appropriate, the book will identify concepts in Silverlight and how they translate to other platforms such as WPF, ASP.NET or Windows Forms (eg "If you are familiar with FeatureX in ASP.NET, FeatureY of Silverlight provides the same capabilities"). For developers already familiar with Silverlight, the book will provide callout information to clearly identify new version features.Finally for all developers, recognizing that ultimately they simply want to be productive, the book with integrate into its content, discussions and demonstrations of third party open source projects that developers can integrate into their own projects to increase their productivity.

Jason Beres is Vice President, Product Management at Infragistics. He is an active .NET user group supporter, an INETA Speaker, and has written multiple books on .NET technologies.

Bill Evjen is one of the most active proponents of .NET technologies. He is the founder of the International .NET Association (INETA), author and coauthor of more than two dozen books, and Global Head of Platform Architecture at Thomson Reuters, Lipper.

Devin Rader works at Infragistics where he focuses on delivering greater user experiences to developers using their controls. He's also a former INETA board member.