Customer Reviews

Adobe AIR Programming Unleashed

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4 star:		(1)
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I am an experienced developer and ActionScript Guru. About to face a huge project in AIR, I needed something that I could quickly go through to avoid reading online and clicking around (yes reading a book at the park its much nicer then browsing blogs and reading PDFs).

Although the book is very verbose, therefore may suit well beginners, its a very handy book for experienced developers who want to dwelve into AIR.

I am not a FLEX guy (I hate FLEX), and the book is aimed almost totally at FLEX and some Webkit apps. But even as a pure ActionScript developer I could follow the whole book with no problem understanding the logic of AIR.

- The book is well written, and although its a bit flooded of not-so-really-useful scren captures, it saves you the time to click and read the popups yourself. Good also for beginners.
- Chapters are organized intelligently. Very easy to skip directly to the part you need.
- Common pitfalls and bug possibilities are highlighted, saving you hours of bug hunting.
- If you are an advanced developer and want quickly understand how to dive in AIR, or if you are a beginner and need verbose how-to help, in both cases I strongly recommend this book.

Respect to the authors
Filippo

Version 1.5 of Adobe AIR is included in this fine guide illustrating the application through a series of examples based on the official 1.5 release. Libraries strong in Adobe AIR development guides will appreciate a programmer's guide covering how to customize and tweak the program for maximum benefit. Included are downloadable examples and source code on the web, making for an even more valuable study tool.

Adobe is making a pitch to the javascript and open source community with its AIR. The attraction is to move towards a unification of the browser and desktop application environments and capabilities. Think of AIR perhaps as an extension of the browser. Long overdue to those of you who have chafed at the limitations of HTML compared to running a full native application on the desktop.

The book shows how with AIR you can use skills built up in Ajax, HTML and Flash. A strong point is the multilanguage capability. Plus the means of using it on linux, Mac and MS Windows. In essence, AIR is a software layer between your code and the operating system. Not unlike the way that java operates, come to think of it.