title: Silverlight 3 and component library advice
body: <p>I have to build a web application in a couple of weeks in your usual 3 tier, UI/Business Logic/Data Store, type way, however the customised UI really isn't achievable in anything but Silverlight or Flash (lots of custom vector drawing, fades, animation type stuff etc.).</p>
  
  <p>Given I'm not a Flash developer, but am an excellent C# programmer, I'm going to use this project as an excuse to learn Silverlight 3.  So, I have a couple of questions which I'd love to hear some thoughts on, to save me a lot of time up-front.</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li><p>What is a great Silverlight 3 book?  Unfortunately I'm not seeing an O'Reily book, which is usually my first preference.  I'm looking for a book that gets right down to business, not a 'history of Silverlight' book.  Here's a canvas, here's how you draw into it, type of thing.  Is there value in buying a Silverlight 2 book, or has enough changed to not make this viable?</p></li>
  <li><p>I want to use a mature Silverlight control library to take care of buttons, gauges, graphs, etc., so I can get on with the custom stuff I need to do.  I've noticed there are a few different vendors.  The ones I've looked at are: Telerik, ComponentOne, Infragistics and Syncfusion.  Frankly they all look pretty good, but I'd love to know if anyone has concrete experience they could share to help me make a decision.</p></li>
  <li><p>I've been noticing that Silverlight apps seem to run into performance problems vs similar Flash apps.  Even the demos of the control vendors I mentioned in (2) seem to run at very variable framerates (I'm testing on a Mac with Safari 4 using Snow Leopard, but I notice this on IE and Chrome too on Windows 7).  I don't mean to create a Silverlight vs Flash flame war here, it's just what I've noticed.  Does anyone have gotchas I can steer clear of?</p></li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>Thanks for your input.</p>
  
  <p>Regards,</p>
  
  <p>Shane</p>