Professional WinFX Beta - the evolution of a book

This book, Professional WinFX Beta: Covers "Avalon" Windows Presentation Foundation and "Indigo" Windows Communication Foundation, deserves some special explanation. The book is published and available now. We made special arrangements to make sure it is available at PDC next week. It's shipping from our warehouse now so while it's published, Amazon and other retailers don't have it quite yet. Those of you at PDC will be the first ones to get a chance to buy it.

Jean-Luc David and I started on this book almost 2 years ago, soon after PDC 2003 when Windows "longhorn" had been previewed to all of the developer crowd there. The book started as a "longhorn" preview for developers - what to expect in beta 1 and how to do development for the new longhorn specific features in beta 1.

We got about 8-10 months into that plan, Jean-Luc had written something like the first quarter of a draft after 2004 WinHec based on a new build we got there. And then late that spring or early summer, MSFT made major changes in what was and wasn't to be in Longhorn and also how even what would be in would be packaged. At that time we really had to scrap most of what JL had written and start over. We also put on the brakes and waited, a lot.

Finally this spring we got a good indication of what would be there for developers in the beta for this summer that's out now. Unfortunately by then, JL was tied up on a 2nd book on another topic that had to be written at the same time. So, we had to revamp the outline and also bring in some writing help.

Now, if you've been paying close attention to this blog, you know I prefer fewer authors versus more authors in most cases. However, because of the way the developer issues with "longhorn" were shaking out, it was clear there were 3 major components we were going to cover: Avalon, Indigo, and data issues. (WinFS was gone by then.) That made it fairly easy to assign 3 different authors to 3 different parts. As there weren't a whole lot of ties between parts 1, 2, 3 we didn't have to worry too much about overlap or underlap between the 3.

Along came a couple of great technical experts from Mobiform (Alexandra Young and Ron DeSerranno) wanting to write an Avalon book for me. Great I told them, would you mind writing part of another book first? So they wrote the Avalon section. (Mobiform is at PDC next week, be sure to stop by their booth for info on their Avalon/XAML offerings.) And luckily I was able to pull in Bill Ryan to write the Data part.

JL still read the whole book, Bill Ryan did some tech editing on some of the other chapters he didn't write, so we were still able to cross-check the book for flow and consistency.

Then we got to spend what JL, Ron, Alexandra, and Bill must have thought was all of July and Auguest re-running and checking all the code in the book to make sure it really did work with Beta 1.

Some people will question why we go to such lengths to publish on a beta, something that so few people will work with. My reason is, the hardest core of the hardcore Wrox audience are the very people who were at PDC 2003 toying with longhorn in their hotels, who'd written sample XAML by the time they got home from PDC. No, this book isn't for everyone, but for those of you who love the bleeding edge, we had a fun if not adventurous trip putting this book together for you.

Jean-Luc, thanks for sticking this through to the end and for putting up with everything.

Ron, Alexandra, (and Glen Sollers too - can't overlook the role you played bring us together), thanks for stepping in and doing great work on short notice. You've been terrific and I can't wait to see the next proposal.

Bill - thanks also for stepping in on so much on short notice. Thanks for being so agreeable to every new task and favor I asked.

Every author who's published more than a couple of computer books probably has war stories to tell of the book that wouldn't end, went through umpteen iterations, the product changed directions with every season, and so on. The 4 of you now have your war story. :)

Comments

[Jean-Luc David]

Hi Jim,

The success of this project is also a testimonial to the hard work and perseverance of the editorial team. Thanks for your support Jim! :)

Best regards,
Jean-Luc
http://weblogs.asp.net/jld/