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Learning Flex 3

Getting up to Speed with Rich Internet Applications

By Alaric Cole
June 2008
Pages: 304
Series: Adobe Developer Library
ISBN 10: 0-596-51732-7 | ISBN 13: 9780596517328
Press Release
(4) (Average of 2 Customer Reviews)

Description

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 first few chapters. Learning Flex 3 offers step-by-step instructions that are clear and concise that teach you how to build a layout, add interactivity, work with data, and deploy your applications to either the Web or the desktop.
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Featured customer reviews

Learning Flex 3 - Great Book!,  June 04 2009
Submitted by Gunnar Hillert   [Respond | View]

Learning Flex 3 by Alaric Cole is a great introductory book for Adobe Flex 3. If you have some basic experience with HTML, JavaScript and CSS, then you will learn the basics of Flex rapidly using this book as a guide. Some of the areas that are taught are:

* How to use Flexbuilder
* Using MXML
* ActionScript 3
* Styling your application using CSS

However, if your professional background is in web-application development using Java or other OO languages, then you are probably more likely to skip or cross-read sections of the book. This is because the book starts out with practically no initial pre-requirements, and thus you might be familiar with some of the discussed areas.

The book gave me an excellent overview of Flex's capabilities, and they are all explained thoroughly and are easily understandable. Also, this may sound silly, but I particularly liked the refreshing fact that the book is in color, unlike most other IT books.

Furthermore, the book explained Data Binding (Chapter 7) very well. This is something I was not familiar with coming from the Java world. The chapter illustrates the concepts of one-way binding, two-way binding and making your own variables "bindable" using a metadata declaration, which is basically an annotation in Java parlance.

Another feature I liked a lot was View States (Chapter 12), which allows you to rearrange, group and reuse components within your application.

I wish the book provided more information for further reading. I understand that certain concepts are beyond the scope of this book, but it would have been nice if those had been mentioned and links or recommendations for further reading were provided.

For example, while AMF is mentioned on page 8 and on page 157 the book briefly talks about the Webservice and RemoteObject component, the book should have also mentioned BlazeDS as one of Flex's core technologies for communicating with back-end servers.

And for more complex applications, the book could have at least pointed out some of the available MVC frameworks for Flex and some pointers of where to read more about them (E.g. Cairngorm and PureMVC). Well, and then there is Degrafa, the declarative graphics framework...

While the author explains the aspects of using CSS in Flex applications very well, he could have further stressed that Flex uses a subset of CSS, which in certain areas behaves differently compared to CSS you more typically use in HTML pages. He should have enumerated some of those pitfalls.

Having said all this, these issues mentioned above are minor in nature. Overall, the book was a fun read! And particularly to Java web-developers, Flex may very well be THE contender for application user interfaces moving forward. One of the great things about Flex is that even the standard components look very good (and should be good enough to please your boss), and your application looks and behaves consistently across various browsers. Oh, and yes you can run the same application on the desktop as well (Chapter 15).

This book will definitely help you learn and master Flex, and you should be able to produce functional user interfaces quickly. In order to learn more about integrating Flex with your Spring powered back-end you may want to also consider looking at "Pro Flex on Spring" by Chris Giametta.


Excellent book, not just for Flex beginners, but for beginners in web development as well,  April 06 2009
Submitted by Ivan Ilijasic   [Respond | View]

Since I am a senior web developer with solid knowledge of Flex technology, I wanted to see does this book offers a good overview of Flex environment and can my partners use this book to teach junior developers about Flex.

I was really suprised how this book is easy to read. It contains almost everything you need to start working with Flex. And what is really unique for this book is the approach of the author. The whole book is written in a way that almost anyone can understand the materials - even the absolute begginers in web development.

Alaric Cole really gave an effort to describe everything that you need to know about Flex basics and his effort to describe some basic models of development. I was really suprised when I've seen the explanation of coordinate system in the first chapter.

Handling and binding data, adding behaviors and styles, working with states, working with components - all these topics are presented in a way to give beginners a overview how to create solid rich internet applications with good interface and 'look and feel'.

What would be nice to see in the book is how to work with server-side technologies, how to create a simple HTTP service with AMF, maybe to give more examples how to work with custom components, item renderers, how to implement custom drag & drop functionality.

Still, this book is an excellent choice for all 'want-to-be' developers and all web developers who want to learn about Flex technology in a good and in a quick way.

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Media reviews
"This most excellent book provides a step-by-step tutorial through all aspects of Flex development, from familiarizing your self with the right tools to learning basic features of ActionScript and MXML, to sharing your completed work with others. More importantly, the author chose topics based on what he felt empowered you to begin development without overwhelming you."
-- John Vacca, Amazon.com


"Learning Flex 3 is a fabulous book for anyone who wants to learn how to use Flex 3 effectively. It not only covers the basics of Flex 3, it describes several skills that you will need to develop RIA's."
-- Scott Powers, Amazon.com


"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...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."
-- Tariq Ahmed, DopeJam blog



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