As usual, a number of people deserve my appreciation. At the top of the list are my wife, Teresa, and my son, Brennen. While I was spending every available hour working on this book, you were both going about your day-to-day lives without me. I'm sorry about that. Thank you for being patient with me and supporting me while I finished this project. I love you both very much.

A big thank-you also goes out to Matt Milner, the technical reviewer for this book. Matt's job was basically to keep me honest. He reviewed each chapter and had the tedious job of executing all of my example code to ensure that it ran correctly. Matt also directed my attention to areas that I might have missed and provided valuable suggestions that improved the quality of this book.

The Apress team once again did an outstanding job—this is my fourth book with them. Matthew Moodie was the editor for my last book and once again stepped in to work with me on this one. He did another superb job providing guidance and suggestions that improved the overall quality of this book. Thanks also go to Ewan Buckingham who was there to provide his editorial guidance at just the right moments in the project.

James Markham was the coordinating editor on the project. That means he was the traffic cop who managed the schedules and directed files to and from the rest of the team. Great job, James; thank you for your work on this book. Thanks also go to Fran Parnell who served as the original coordinating editor before James transitioned to the team. I was very fortunate to have Kim Wimpsett as my copy editor once again. She worked on my last book, and I requested her early in this project. Thank you, Kim, for an excellent job. You once again corrected my many errors without dramatically changing my written voice. Production has my appreciation for their fine formatting work on this book.

For this book, I was fortunate to have access to additional Microsoft development resources that were not available to me for my previous books. Foremost among these resources was Ed Hickey. Ed was the Microsoft program coordinator for the Connect program that I joined and my central contact for all things Microsoft. On more than one occasion I contacted Ed with a problem, and he always followed through by contacting just the right Microsoft developer. Thank you, Ed.

I also need to thank the Microsoft (and non-Microsoft) folks who frequented the private Microsoft WF 4 forum. These folks addressed my questions, comments, suggestions, and bug reports and patiently tried to explain how WF 4 really worked without the benefit of any formal public documentation. I'm sure I've missed some names, but these folks went the extra mile to make sure that my questions were addressed: Scott Mason, Justin Brown, Nate Talbert, Ed Pinto, Matt Winkler, and Dave Cliffe. And thanks also go out to Maurice de Beijer who often pointed me in the right direction went I went astray. On more than one occasion, it seemed as though Maurice and I had the forum to ourselves and were asking similar questions.

I continue to receive many positive comments from readers of my previous WF books. Many of you write to me with questions that I try to answer, but others simply write to let me know how much they enjoyed one of my books. Thank you for your continued support. I hope you enjoy this latest edition.