Customer Reviews

Adobe Flex 2: Training from the Source

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

This book does a great job at providing carefully checked step by step exercises. On that level it is 5 stars. I am on chapter 8 and found no errors and I type in the code examples. However I did find unexpected results - mentioned later. There is a lot of meticulous checking to be sure the progression of the examples are correct.

The content also shows a professional developer approach to applying the technology. This does not appear to be a book written from another language's perspective such as an Actionscript programmer trying to write a Flex book. The author is focused on Flex and exposing the functionality in how you best would apply it. So I would say the content is top notch, but again I am the student and this is my professional developer gut experience making the call.

This book uses one grocery store shopping cart example all the way through. This is boring as heck to see that example chapter after chapter. Now the book does provide starting files for each chapter in case you messed up. However the authors were forced to add more and more to support the development of the application. This resulted in situations such as chapter 7 that went way overboard to complete the progression of the application to the end. Rather than focusing efforts on specifics of Flex you were repeating work to support the app. You would say enough already. Chapter 7 took me 3 hours to complete as it predicts in the beginning. It could have been writted for 1 hour and covered the lesson points about components and provided a larger variety of examples.

You also are doing things to support the progression of the application that later you undo for changing architecture. This makes understanding the application more difficult.

Despite the effort to provide start files at the beginning of each lesson, there are intermediate exercise steps with testing points within the lessons. There are no files to support you if you error or if there are errors in the exercise steps. One I came across is Lesson 8. The first "Displaying the Categories Using a HorizontalList and ItemRender" did not work for me. This prevented me from starting the next section in the lesson. I went over and over the steps. Stuck for 1 hour I finally deleted all the project files and started over and it worked. Would have been nice to have samples of what I should have had at the end of that segment, so I will not know what went wrong.

I went to the site for the book to see if there was an errata. There was not and there is no place to provide feedback for this type of item. Hey book companies (live errata like live docs moderated) increases quality of your technical products.

The book is not a sit down and read as some of the exercise steps can be as many as 20 or more. There is good annotation for the steps but not enough to read very long without becoming fully lost. I would say you cannot read any of the lessons (after the first few) all the way through and understand them without doing them and practicing.

I would not recommend using the Flex SDK to try to absorb this book. You really need Flexbuilder to be productive in following the book. The exercises can be done with just the SDK, just be prepared for a longer work period.

I see comments that the book is for advanced and then for beginners. You do have to have programming experience to follow the book.

I am an advanced Flash AS2 and now AS 3 developer. I wanted to get the gist of Flex for back end AS apps. It has been difficult with this book and I would say I am lost in the example most of the time. I have done the Quick Starts at the Adobe site which do have smaller simpler to follow exercises before I ventured into this book.

Bottom line, this is a great step by step book the shows off Flex features for building a shopping cart application. It covers a wide range of Flex features. It is error checked and provides useful commentary in the steps.

The exercises are way too long to keep focus if you follow along. There is no variety so boooooring.

I was a vocal Flex skeptic, this book turned that around quickly. I'd recommend this as the entry point for anyone looking to learn Flex 2. And, I'd recommend learning Flex because it's the future of rich UI.

I've just purchased this book and started reading it. What I've seen is that the book is divided into lessons, and each lesson has different exercises. You can follow the lessons as you were at class, with a very good learning curve. So, if you want to have a solid base on this technology, you need a lot of time to do all the examples and exercises but, when you finish the book, you KNOW Flex 2.

If you're initiated and need a reference guide, don't buy this book. In other case, this is maybe the best book for learning Flex 2 with a training way.

(Sorry for my English, I am Spanish and I've tried to write the best I could)

This book is a great resource to learn MXML, the Flex Builder (plugin/app), and fundamentals of ActionScript 3 and the Flex framework. You will find that slapping an interface together is quite fun and can even get most general projects done with pure MXML, and this book does a good job at showing that.

ActionScript hardcores may not get "enough" from this book, and that's because it's not an AS3 book by itself.

Video is not covered, which isn't a simple concept considering there's a lot to learn in the Flex world, but video deserves more mention within the book.

Great and thorough introduction to Flex2. One recommendation to authors would be to outline the project in the beginning of the book so that as developer reader knows what is he trying to achieve in the project, besides learning :)

The book offers good introduction to Flex 2 and includes many tips as well. But the big problem for this books is the writing style. The examples are usually modified/enhanced examples from previous chapters. But the authors relentlessly go through each line changes with a huge paragraph; it often looks something like "remove this line, add this component, and save". A usual half page worth of content is bloated to 3, 4 pages of tedious step-by-step instructions. I personally would prefer to see the code changes between 2 versions directly, something like a side-by-side code snippet comparison would do the trick.

With years of experience in Flash and Actionscript programming, I was still having a hard time getting my first Flex applications to work. There was always some small detail I was missing, resulting in hours of searching the net for clues.

"Adobe Flex 2: Training from the Source" has provided me with the answers to most of the missing details and some that I didn't know (yet) that I was missing. I think the book gives a good introduction to the concept of Flex. The natural progression through the book is also very easy to follow. All concepts are accompanied by code examples that are explained in a simple way.

What I'm still missing after reading this book, is a more detailed explanation on XMLListCollections, ArrayCollections and their uses together with external data. More details on subclassing the AS classes could also be useful, as I'm surely going to make my own custom classes after reading this book. Then again, one book can't cover it all. I'm looking for a good AS3 book covering this subject.

If you want to learn Flex, buy this book. Don't waste your time working it out yourself while waiting for possibly better Flex 2 books to be published.