Adobe Flex 2: Training from the Source (Paperback)

~ (Author), Matt Boles (Author), James Talbot (Author), Ben Elmore (Author), (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Part of the Adobe Training from the Source series, the official curriculum from Adobe, developed by experienced trainers. Using project-based tutorials, this book/CD volume is designed to teach the techniques needed to create sophisticated, professional-level projects. Each book includes a CD that contains all the files used in the lessons, plus completed projects for comparison. This title covers the new development framework for Rich Internet Applications, Adobe Flex 2. In the course of the book, the reader will build several Web applications using Flex Builder and incorporating MXML and ActionScript 3.0.

About the Author

Jeff Tapper is the Chief Technologist and CEO for Tapper, Nimer and Associates, Inc. He has been developing Internet-based applications since 1995 for a myriad of clients including Morgan Stanley, Doctations, Toys R Us, IBM, Dow Jones, American Express, M&T Bank, Verizon, and many others. He has been developing Flex applications since the earliest days of Flex 1. As an Instructor, Jeff is certified to teach all of Adobe’s courses on Flex, ColdFusion, and Flash development. He is also a frequent speaker at Adobe Development Conferences and user groups. Jeff Tapper and Mike Nimer formed Tapper, Nimer and Associates provide expert guidance to rich Internet application development and empower clients through mentoring.

James Talbot has been with Adobe (formerly Macromedia) for more than six years, on both the sales engineering and training teams, and has most recently been working with Flex and Flash Lite. He has traveled extensively throughout the world promoting Adobe products and certifying Adobe instructors as well as speaking at conferences. James has been an integral team member on high profile rich Internet application consulting assignments for companies such as AOL / Time Warner, JP Morgan, Fidelity, and TV Guide.
James is actively involved in the Adobe worldwide instructor and developer community, and contributes to developer certification exams as well as organizing and speaking at user groups. James is passionate about Flash on devices as well as rich Internet applications and he believes that both technologies will change the world for the better.

Matthew Boles is the Technical Lead for the Adobe Customer Training group and has been developing and teaching courses on Flex since the 1.0 release. Matthew has a diverse background in web development, computer networking, and teaching in both professional computer classes and the public schools. In addition to this book, Matthew co-authored
a version of the Certified ColdFusion Developer Study Guide. He has also developed official Allaire/Macromedia/
Adobe curricula in both ColdFusion and Flash development content areas.

Benjamin Elmore is the founder and principal partner of Twin Technologies, an enterprise consulting
company that specializes in delivering rich Internet applications for Fortune 500 companies. Ben has been working in the RIA/Web 2.0 spaces since its inception and has authored several books on a variety of technologies. Ben founded Twin Technologies with a core principle of embracing a shared knowledge base within the development community. When leading Twin Technologies, Ben travels to Africa and Turkey to speak on leadership on behalf of the EQUIP organization (www.iequip.org), whose goal is to raise a million Christian leaders over five years. A devoted family man, Ben lives with his wife Mary and their five children in upstate New York.

Michael Labriola, who has devoted a decade and a half to Internet technologies, is a Senior Consultant and Project Lead for Digital Primates, Inc. He spends his mornings teaching developers to work with Flex; his afternoons creating rich Internet applications that generate significant ROI for clients; and his nights dreaming up ways to use Flex that its designers never intended.

Product Details

• Paperback: 624 pages
• Publisher: Adobe Press (October 30, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 032142316X
• ISBN-13: 978-0321423160
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 7.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #592,468 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It ramped me up fast, January 28, 2007

By	David R. Harper (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I am only halfway through this book but, after less than two days, it helped me create a simple Flex 2 application. I am proficient in Flash 8 and ActionScript 2, but I struggled a bit with the Flex framework. The two negative reviews are strange. You cannot call this low book "low quality." I've done every exercise up to the halfway point - and I haven't found a single error! The guy who reports typos is just wrong (i.e., "end <tag>" implies "</tag>". This won't give you trouble...), the ones he cites are not.

Also, I don't quite understand the point of the reviewer who would prefer a "conceptual method." I don't know about you, but my goal is to learn how to use the tool...doing concrete exercises is a terrific way to learn concepts. Especially in the flex framework, a concept sounds good until you try and code it. I learn much better with examples. Also, the focus here is not ActionScript 3.0, rather it's about the Flex development environment. I like AS so I sort of resisted Flex, but wow, it's really powerful - I can't believe how easy it is to do some things.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Instruction and Training, March 28, 2007

By	SiNMiN "Sinister-Minister" (Detoit, MI) - See all my reviews

We've spent $3000+ getting introductory courses into this software, and this book may have done the trick. I'm still glad I had the courses because they gave me some instant leverage. But I didn't walk away with knowledge in areas that were absolutely important.

For instance, my class didn't cover anything on the combo/drop down boxes and how to get them to connect to outside data sources, such as a XML file. HOWEVER, this book had several samples on connecting to various data sources with combo boxes.

This book is a life saver. Combo boxes play a big role in my apps.

Anyway, it "walks you through the process." According to some who've bought the book, it seems tedious. But the programming language is very specific and very detailed. This book explains everything in a rational step by step manner, and informing you of relevant things which are associated with the lesson. So if your working in the combo-box area for instance, the book will also give you detailed pointers on data services... not just the combo box. (Data services is a term we use in flex to describe how we connect to data, servers, or some scripts to execute a command...)

Also, the book is set up so I can either get something quickly to do something specific, or I can go through the lesson. VERY HANDY. Each chapter also tells you how long the lesson will take. Great for planning your training.

I hesistated buying this book because of the reviews I read until I had no choice but to buy it because none of my expensive 'authorized' training manuals gave me the critical information I needed. DON'T MAKE THE SAME MISTAKE.

This is your best source for information. Make no mistake about that.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Resource for Flex 2 Developers, January 25, 2007

By	Kirk Holbrook (Maine, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Wow! I'd recommend this to anyone using Flex 2. The authors have done an amazing job with presenting concepts in a well-organized and compelling manner. The book follows the development of a fictional, on-line grocery store. I rarely follow these step-by-step books as the authors intended, but the concepts in this book evolve as the store is developed, and the exercises are clear and concise. I followed the book right through from beginning to end.

I've been developing a significant project with Flex 2 for the past 8 months. I'm not a newbie as far as Flex or ActionScript are concerned, but I got a lot of really useful information out of this book. Some reaffirmed what I've been doing, while others gave me tweaks (and a few outright "So THAT's the way to handle that!" moments).

The book does a great job at describing how and why to do most tasks in Flex 2. Looking for a tutorial on how to work with HTTP calls? How about data sets, events, custom components, charting, styles, skins, transitions, printing, shared object, or debugging? They're all in there, as well as a few similar exercises done with ActionScript vs. MXML.

The one drawback I see here is in the area of Flex Data Services (FDS). Personally, I think they could have dropped the limited introduction to the many advanced features of FDS and published a separate book on that (which hopefully Adobe Press will do anyway).

The book includes a CD-ROM with a preset, developer copy of ColdFusion to work through some of the exercises. It would have been nice if they had included the FDS components on the CD, too, but it can be downloaded from Adobe's website.

At any rate, this is an excellent resource for anyone using Flex 2.