Customer Reviews

Adobe AIR Bible

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I've been looking for a solid Air book, and the Bible series delivers once again. So far, i like the fact the book goes beyond the framework and gives incite into application development and best practices. An added bonus is the chapter on automation using ANT.

I liked how thin this book was when I picked it up, as the concept seems to be to give a concise tour of the AIR API that the reader can work through without the "what have I gotten myself into" feeling you get with 1000+ page tomes. Unfortunately, the editors have completely fallen down on the job. The code samples are chock full of errors - it is clear they were not so much as compiled to flush out basic problems with capitalization, variable names, etc. Part of the reason to spend money on a computer book is to pay someone else to assemble a coherent set of working examples for you, so that you don't have to spend your time cobbling together and error-checking what you can for free from random sources around the web. Editors who can't be bothered with covering the basics don't deserve the money for a book.

What's more important to readers of this review, however, is that the companion site for the book was apparently never even populated with errata, and was abandoned shortly after creation. I went there to check for errata, and found that the comments section of the site had been heavily spammed, and apparently a successful code injection attack has infected the site with malware. Shortly after visiting the site, I got a suspicious system tray pop-up from a program calling itself "Antivirus Action" that was able to install itself and render my system useless. This happened with up-to-date OS patches and antivirus software on my system. The rest of my evening was then wasted researching this malware on another one of my computers until I found a removal procedure involving the joys of safe booting and registry editing. "Antivirus Action" is apparently a malicious fake antivirus program that prompts the user to "upgrade" to a paid version with ominous sounding warnings and an inability to start any other programs, and which is in fact a trojan.

So, in summary, unless you don't care about running any of the code examples, don't bother with this book. It was a nice idea, that was completely botched with editorial laziness, and a less than half-hearted effort at a companion site.

The book provides a good overview of the Air framework and some helpful advice in how to structure and think about developing a complicated application in Air. There are however several large shortcomings. As someone else stated, the book is described as being for both flash and flex, however all of the major coding examples are done in flex and not in flash, so if you are not familiar with both you will have a hard time figuring out the examples if you are a flash user. Also there are problems with the examples in the book. There are mistakes in the sample code, and the sample code in the descriptions does not match up with the full code when they pull it all together (example in chapter 8 there is a simple text editor which instructs you on the use of accessing the file system. You go through step by step with a description of the code you are writing, in step 8.15 it tells you to type in one thing, then at the end of the chapter in 8.23 you get the full code as it is supposed to be when done, and the code is different.). I even went to the website to download the sample files, so I could see which one was correct, but the sample files for this chapter were not there, all the other ones were though. There is nothing more frustrating than when you are trying to learn a new aspect of programming, then being given examples that don't work in the first place. Since accessing the file system is the major reason for using air, instead of just flash or flex on its own, the book really is lacking. I would not recommend purchasing it if you are planning on using it for flash, if you are using it for flex, you will probably be fine, but be aware up front, that there are mistakes in some of the example code.

This book was an invaluable reference for me while I was building my first AIR applications, like my Web Video Bitrate Starter app (see [...]). I've since learned how to build bigger and better AIR applications, like a large source file uploader for [...]. Thanks to Ryan, Ben, and Jeff for writing the definitive resource on the matter!

First of all I know how difficult it is to write a book. Therefore, thanks to the authors for writing this book. It is a good intro to AIR and as pointed out in other reviews it educates to program using Design patterns. As stated in the book it is not for beginners, and one needs to be familiar with AS. However, it was not stated anywhere that the main focus of this book is Flex. Although I am familiar with Flex, I usually prefer Flash and expected good Flash examples. The only example in the book is a "Hello World" text Flash example. Sure, I can download/buy Flex 3 or the SDK but there should have been a balance of the examples with more Flash applications or how to convert the Flex to Flash examples. If the authors did not want to do that, it should have been stated that the examples are mainly for Flex 3.
Another problem of the book are some of the examples. Only very few examples are actually available in the downloadable source code. The SimpleTextEditor example turns into a nightmere. It just starts somewhere without explaining names and folders of the files. There are a number of mistakes in the files. I don't think it should be the user's task to do the author's job. On their companion website I did not find any corrections. I had the impression that this book was written to get published fast. Allover the book is useful but should get a makeover by adding up corrections and examples on the companion website.

Indispensable Book for building desktop applications because it shows you like to create your projects so easy and understandable.

Why is the Kindle version so expensive? It seems like you would want a paper copy for an intense usage like learning a new language, and for the better diagrams, etc. You'd accept the Kindle version for something you wanted to skim or you might be willing to keep an e-copy for less if it wasn't your main reference on the topic, or if it was a really good deal by e-book. Am I missing something? Maybe I just don't understand. Can someone who's tried the Kindle version pipe up about why it's better or why one would pay almost as much as for paper to get a Kindle version of this book. Someone who's actually bought the Kindle version and is using it? (Thanks)