Project Silk: Client-Side Web Development for Modern Browsers (Microsoft patterns & practices)

Project Silk provides guidance for building maintainable cross-browser web applications that are characterized by an intentional design, rich interactivity, and a responsive user interface (UI). The result is an immersive and engaging user experience (UX). Such applications take advantage of the latest web standards, including HTML5, CSS3, and ECMAScript version 5, and modern web technologies such as jQuery and ASP.NET MVC 3. The concepts explained in this book are demonstrated via a real-world customer-facing web application called the Mileage Stats Reference Implementation (Mileage Stats). Mileage Stats allows users to track and compare their vehicles’ fuel efficiency, usage, and operating costs, and to schedule vehicle maintenance reminders. The image below shows the Mileage Stats client-side objects and their implementation mapped to libraries or frameworks. Building a rich web application that reduces the number of full-page loads, includes animations, and is responsible for updating the UI dynamically requires a thoughtful approach to managing structure, modularity, communication, navigation, and data. This book details how the Project Silk team designed Mileage Stats and solved a number of challenges. This guidance is intended for web developers and assumes you have some hands-on experience with ASP.NET MVC, CSS, HTML, JavaScript, and jQuery.

Bob Brumfield, while a senior development lead with the Microsoft patterns & practices team, primarily worked on Prism, Enterprise Library, and Web Guidance projects. Before joining Microsoft, he focused on helping teams deliver Microsoft-based solutions as a consultant in the Colorado Rocky Mountain region. Bob has more than 15 years of experience with professional software development and architecture.

Geoff Cox is a principal software developer with deep experience building both desktop and web applications as well as high-scale web services. He enjoys software projects requiring thoughtful architecture, beautiful code, and agile teamwork.

Nelly Delgado is a senior programming writer on the Microsoft patterns & practices team. She has worked on patterns & practices guidance for 10 years and is passionate about delivering quality documentation to Microsoft customers.

Michael Puleio is a senior software developer, pragmatic agilist, and coffee addict. He worked for Microsoft for over 10 years and was a member of the patterns & practices (p&p) team. At p&p, he delivered applied engineering guidance in a number of areas, including Windows client development and the web space.

Karl Shifflett worked for the Microsoft patterns & practices team, where he managed the desktop projects such as Prism and the Web Guidance project. He is one of the authors of the Developer's Guide to Microsoft Prism and Project Silk. Karl is well known in the .NET community, loves teaching, and enjoys writing about the .NET Framework. Karl's two blogs are http://karlshifflett.wordpress.com/ and http://blogs.msdn.com/kashiffl.

Don Smith was a Senior Program Manager on the patterns & practices team at Microsoft. In his six years with p&p, he produced developer guidance related to web services, Visual Studio extensibility and software factories, application architecture, data access, and most recently client-side web development with HTML5 and JavaScript. He can be found on Twitter @locksmithdon

Dwayne Taylor is a Director of Consulting Services for RDA Corporation. He has a background in application security and software architecture, and provides subject matter expertise for application security and software patterns. He provides technical consulting for application integration and helps customers design and develop applications in the cloud.

Silk forewords by: Mike Hostetler and Rey Bango.