Packt Publishing, the folks who published our Microsoft Silverlight 4 Business Application Development book have included some of the chapters of that book in a new mashup of their best selling Silverlight books. The new book is called Managing Media and Data in Microsoft Silverlight 4 and features great chapters from several different authors’ Silverlight books, covering the gambit from XAML and layouts to SharePoint integration to REST and RIA services.

In addition, they are also offering a discount on all Microsoft technology books during the month of May so be sure to check that out as well at Packt’s Microsoft Carnival!

Silverlight is still a great technology for business development, it eases deployment issues with distributed software, provides an interactive experience for users via a browser while maintaining the power of C# in the development life cycle.

Mine and Frank's book Silverlight 4 Business Application Development: Beginner's Guide will be part of a promotion at Packt starting September 21st and running until September 30th. You can get 20% off the print copy and 30% off the e-book copy during this time!

Visit Packt's website for more details.

For those of you out there wanting to get into Silverlight development but just do not know where to start, Frank LaVigne and I have just about completed our book titled Microsoft Silverlight 4 Business Application Development – Beginner’s Guide(link to pre-order). This book will be ideal for current Windows or ASP.NET developers who want to learn Silverlight and because the book is centered on Business Application Development we will empower you with knowledge so you can recommend Silverlight for the next business project at your company.

Gaining the basics required to develop in Silverlight, make use of data binding, WCF and RIA Services you will be prepared to lead the Silverlight charge at your company. Be warned, once you start developing in Silverlight you will have a hard time going back to normal ASP.NET development.