At a recent workshop, a developer raised his hand and asked me if I could teach me him how to design. I responded with "Not in 10 minutes, I can't."

Although a poor attempt at humor on both of our sides, his request had a real motivation. As technologies like Silverlight push forward, the lines between where the design work stops and the development work begins have begun to blur. This new type of technology, which provides such a large amount of UI customization with ease, can produce amazing results. This type of UI freedom can also be very intimidating and possibly produce awful results. Trust me, I've seen it before.

Guidance is needed for both developers and designers to know how best to take advantage of Silverlight's flexible UI capabilities. Luckily, there are a few people who specialize in this space between design and development and act as a catalyst to bring out the best results from the two sides.

There are three tasks that this Design Developer person can aid with during the development cycle:

Vibor Cipan, the author of this book, is one of those Design Developers who helps with all three of the aforementioned tasks. He is also an active community member, with a popular blog, a passion for UX, and a lot of history in the Silverlight space.

In this book, he shares his knowledge of UI patterns covering: when to use them, why they work, and how to implement them in Silverlight. For the designer who is already familiar with the UI patterns, this book can help you begin to implement them in Silverlight and Expression Blend. For the developer who already knows the code, this book can help you decide when and why to use which pattern.

Grab a copy of the book and share it with your team, refer to it as a reference (which is easily done due its tidy format), and learn how to take advantage of the amazingly flexible UI capabilities of Silverlight!

Adam Kinney

Principal, Designer and Developer - Pixel Lab