Learning Flex 3: Getting Up to Speed with Rich Internet Applications

by Alaric Cole

How soon can you learn Adobe Flex 3? With this book's unique hands-on approach, you will be able to tinker with examples right away, and create your own Rich Internet Applications with Flex within the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0596517327
• ISBN13: 9780596517328
• Release Date: June 2008
• Publisher: Adobe Developer Library
• Length: 283 Pages
• Weight: 1.54 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 8.1" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

Great book for getting started. (but what does that mean)

Let me start off by saying I hate web coding. I hate it. I hate the browser issues, I hate the "hacks" to do something, I hate the whole thing. And as for Flash? Why am I putting action script into a frame, on a time line, to do what now? Things were great and simple when it was HTML 1.0 and CGI. I prefer C, assembly, and Perl, because it just works. Humbug. However, this book gives me hope that it is worth while to get back in. This is what javascript should have been, this is what java applets should have been. This is Christmas morning for Web 2.0. This book walks you through an explanation of the syntax of mxml and gives an adequate tool chest of techniques on how to go further and more importantly where you should begin looking. I find just knowing what vocabulary to use when I google will often lead me to other code examples, etc. This book gives you the lingo to start doing that and Mr. Cole seems to know what he is doing and acts and talks in a way that Flex documentation expects him to act and talk, all the while communicating clearly to someone who hasn't the foggiest idea what's the difference between a transition, state, filter or effect...and more importantly how do I use those to make awesome rockin' flash apps already. I'm not an expert after reading this book. Neither will you be. But, Bravo to Mr. Cole for giving a crash course/overview on action script- assignment, classes, objects, methods, functions, etc. You'll be thirsting for more, and he breaks it down enough to let you know that there is somewhat of a serious programming language behind it. Also, almost all of the examples are done completely within mxml but with the slightest hint of actionscript. Much better than other examples I've found where it wasn't clear to me what the mxml was doing and what the action script was doing. This book demonstrates the promise of what mxml provides, and that is rapid application development using mxml. Not only that the breadth of what is presented in this book is enough to start doing some real work. However, you'll need to hit up livedocs on adobe's site to go deeper and to get yourself in and out of trouble. Just as a note: I was able to use Eclipse SDK, some software updates I found on the net, google code's xsd4mxml to trick out Eclipse, and the free flex3 sdk from adobe for all of the examples. Mr. Cole talks about FlexBuilder (a bit), but you don't need it which he readily admits. I did it this way, cuz' I'm cheap like that.

Good choice to get your feet wet with Flex

The first thing that stood out is that it's in color! I love color, especially for technical material it adds a whole extra dimension to the medium and another vehicle by which to communicate. Obviously in code listings it makes the code easier to visually digest and mentally break down what you're seeing, and with screen caps color is so much more appealing. The dimension of the book is wider that normal, which gives the book an extra wide gutter that the publisher is able to leverage. And leverage they do by making use of it for an assortment of side bars, notes, tips, and blurbs. So aside from the aesthetics, content of course is the key. The book is aimed at beginners who don't necessarily have any sort of programming background - so the audience that this book would appeal to includes anyone interested in learning more about Flex and if it's the right fit for them; as a quick read (only 304 pages) you can blast through this book in a short amount of time. Who might those people be? Developers wanting to test the waters with Flex because they had heard good things about it, Flash or Web media designers thinking about getting into the development side of things with Flex, and management level folks looking to explore new opportunities and want to get a barometer reading on what it would take to get into Flex, etc... The writing style is fairly casual, and you feel like the author is talking to you (as opposed to the feeling of a manual). I think the author does a pretty good job at keeping things high level with enough meat to make the reader feel they're actually being productive as they work through the examples. So I'd recommend this book to someone who wants to get their feet wet with Flex - someone who may not be fully committed to Flex at this point in time and doesn't want to invest a ton of time yet. * Difficulty Level: Beginner * Range of topics: Moderate * Depth of topics: Light * Development experience needed: None * Reading Speed: Fast * Writing Style: Casual

This is it!

I have started to read several Flex books in the past. I say "started", because I quickly lost interest. Many times I found myself scratching my head saying "Why would anyone ever do that?" This book has been an amazing adventure. The examples are relevant, the writing is entertaining without being off topic, and best of all, within the first 5 chapters I knew enough to make a basic Flex website. If you have some web design experience with html, and css, then I highly recommend this book!

Thorough, yet easy to read

Alaric Cole succeeds in this book where many others fail. He manages to keep the pace of learning brisk, while providing adequate (and brief!) examples that clearly demonstrate his point without creating more questions. It's easy to read while still covering subject depth.

A great beginning to intermediate Flex 3 book

I've worked with Flash and ActionScript for a few years, but I'm new to Flex so I purchased three Flex books and I found this one to be the best one. I like how the author has you build smaller applications that work by themselves but also adds more features to them as the book progresses. There are some minor code issues, but he answered my questions on his website which is one of the best book websites I've seen [...]. All of the source files and the working applications can be viewed on his site. I also really enjoy the layout of the new Learning series that O'Reilly has been putting out (similar to the Learning ActionScript 3 book). The color coding and pictures are a nice change from the majority of black and white technical books. Since the focus of this book is Flex and MXML, newer programmers will need to supplement this book with an ActionScript book once they start to build more advanced applications. Highly recommended for those who are new to Flex.