A book like this is a team effort from start to finish. Though my name may be on the cover, there's no way I could've completed this without the support and hard work of many others. I'd like to thank:
Chad Campbell and John Stockton for creating such an excellent first edition. Without their hard work covering Silverlight 2, I would never have thought to create a Silverlight 4 edition.
Marshal Agnew, Brendan Clark, and Jordan Parker on the Silverlight product team for their help in digging into the darkest recesses of the rendering and layout system. If not for these folks, I wouldn't have been able to provide the level of detail chapter 6 includes.
David Ferguson and Seema Ramchandani, both on the Silverlight product team, for help on performance questions around transformations.
Tim Heuer on the Silverlight product team for help on the Silverlight installation experience covered in chapter 25.
Jeff Handley on the WCF RIA Services product team for reviewing the RIA Services chapter on a really tight schedule.
Ashish Shetty on the Silverlight product team for encouraging my Silverlight blogging very early on, including much of the app model and startup process content that ended up in this book.
Tom McKearney, Tad Van Fleet, Al Pascual, and Ben Hayat for their excellent tech reviews. They caught a ton of mistakes, including differences between Silverlight 2, 3, and 4, and changes from the early builds through to the release of Silverlight 4.
René Schulte for keeping my imaging and pixel shader sections honest and up to date. René is the go-to guy for working with bitmaps and shaders.
Mike Street on the forums for his helpful and thorough review of many of the chapters on the forums. Mike was a great unofficial tech reviewer for this book.
In addition, there were numerous editors, proofreaders, and reviewers at Manning Publications who deserve thanks for their hard work. I dropped on them a book twice as large as they were expecting with a third of the production time they normally take. People like Benjamin Berg, Mary Piergies, Nermina Miller, Gordan Salinovic, and others worked tirelessly to get this book published in time. I thank them and the rest of the folks at Manning for not freaking out when the book missed two deadlines, came in three months late, and at twice the expected length.
Unique in this thanks is my editor, Jeff Bleiel. This was the first book I've written, so I wasn't sure what to expect. A good editor can make the difference between a horrible authoring experience and a good one. Jeff definitely made that difference, respected our different areas of expertise, and kept the book on track. He was my interface with Manning and my mentor as an author. Jeff made a positive contribution to this book and to my writing in general.
In addition to the individuals who helped me with the book itself, there are those who have made it possible through their presence or actions.
Most of all, I'd like to thank my wife Melissa for being a single mom for most of 2010 and my children Ben and Abby for understanding when mom told them "Papa's writing and can't play right now." Writing a book this size, for a product that revs every 10 to 12 months, is an undertaking that involves your whole family.
I'd like to thank my manager at Microsoft, Scott Hanselman, for making sure I had time to finish the book. This book took an incredible amount of time to write and, if not for Scott offering me some flexibility, it simply wouldn't have been completed.
Of course, I thank the Silverlight and WPF community, my Twitter followers, the Silverlight and WPF insiders, the MVPs, and all the people who've read and commented on my blog posts since Silverlight was first released. The community support for and excitement around these technologies kept me motivated to create the best book possible.
My gratitude also to my mum for encouraging me in my computer work and for helping me get that first job writing a database application from scratch in C++. I wouldn't be where I am today without her.
I'd like to thank my dad, who passed away during the writing of this book. He never quite understood what I was doing with the Commodore in my room, typing in all that hex code from the back of a magazine, but he supported me from the start and encouraged me to pursue a career doing what I love.
Finally, I'd like to thank you, my readers.