Customer Reviews

The Essential Guide to Flex 3 (Essentials)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you don't know Flex 3 and want to learn the basics and then some, well then this book might just be for you. The author takes you through Installing Eclipse and Flex Builder 3 (FB3) which I found very informing. He then takes you through some of the different areas in FB3. The chapter on ActionScript (Chapter 3) is not a very good one. You will need a different book for ActionScript reference. You then go through some of the "essentials" of Flex 3 to understand how to build an application.

I was a bit confused at times but it might have been because of the speed I was going through this book. If I would have slowed down a bit, I think it would have been a lot clearer. Also, I am new to Flex so it was learning from scratch for me.

This book does not come with the files, nor can you download them. I really think if it had the files it would have been a MUCH better read/work along. There are a few errors in the code and you have to guess at times as to what it should be. I could not get one section to work at all (as was shown in the book).

If you want to learn Flex 3 or get a better understanding of Flex 3, then I would tell you to read this book. The information you will learn far outweighs the few errors and lack of files. I've always said the best way to learn code, is to sit down and type it out. You will be doing a lot of this. Good job Charles!

This is one of the most well-written books I have ever read. I have been programming JavaScript for several years, so I assume that makes learning ActionScript fairly easy for me. Nevertheless, this is a good introductory book to Flex 3. All of the examples work flawlessly. The only thing wrong with the book are some unbelievably huge typographical errors, but they are easy to spot and easy to decipher. Sometimes you have to look at the example code from the website to get the correct text. The errors have not caused me any problems and I would highly recommend this book to anyone new to Flex 3.

I am a desktop programmer entering the Web application developmnet world.

This book is a very good point to start, explaining how do learn Flex without attending a course.

Brown introduce de use of Flex step by step very clearly.

I have bought other good books I recommend reading in the following sequence :

Guide to Flex 3 (Charles Brown)
Adobe Flex for Dummies (Douge MCune)
Adobe Flex 3 Bible David Gassner

Good Book. Would have raised rating to 4 1/2 stars if that was an option.
Enjoyed reading and doing the exercises. Not many errors, few but they where small. Wish Chapter 15 (AIR) would have been a little longer with more detail.

All in all, a good start. Introduced to many topics, ColdFusion was a good one.

Thanks

If you ask me, if you want to learn Flex, you should really check out this book. It contains all the information you need to start developing RIA applications. In the first few chapters you will get an overview of Flex, how to install it. One detail about installing Flex. Since Flex/Flash Builder is based on Eclipse, a lot of developers have multiple development environments on one Eclipse instance (Zend Studio plugin,ColdFusion plugin,...). This book will give you an info how to install Flex/Flash Builder as Eclipse plugin.

Later on, you will get a short overview about ActionScript. The book gives a brief information about the ActionScript patterns you will use in your typical Flex code. If you want to learn essential ActionScript, I would recommend to get one more book, just about ActionScript essentials.

Like it said, you will get all needed information about Flex - how to create event handlers, your custom events, custom item renderers. The book is really good for understanding textfield formatters and CSS formatting. It doesn't go around the topic and it focuses on primary target - how to give you useful tips. Some of the useful chapters talk about printing and charting and also it has a really useful topic about drag and drop functionality.

Besides a lot of simple examples, through this book you will create a Flex application about FriendsOfEd books. You will connect to XML sources and get some useful information how to connect to ColdFusion and PHP services.

Primary focus of this book is Flex and perhaps you can get more information about connecting Flex to PHP/CF in some other books but here you will get enough basic data to start exploring other tips online.

I tried to compare this book with another book - Flex 3: Training from the source. They are very similar but I have a feeling this book is more focused on examples, less on theory.

At the end, I will recommend you to check out if there is a new edition of this book for Flex 4.

For someone new to Flex and maybe even programming in general, The Essential Guide to Flex 3 is probably one of the better books I've seen. It does a good job going over all of the different components and usage and then ties them all together with a larger project. I'm recommending this book to my employees over a few others that go over the basics but don't really get into creating a complete application.

For the advanced developer, there's probably nothing here worthwhile other than having a quick reference. The writing style is very good and isn't boring text book style and thus helps keep the reader's interest.

I would have liked to have seen a little more concerning connecting flex to data sources such as web services or databases, though. The brief section on php/asp was pretty much useless. The Cold Fusion and LCDS were good, but I most development projects I've been involved with don't use either of those.

I am a beginning Flex programmer with only a bit of experience using ActionScript 3.0 with Flash. I found this book to be very helpful with both clear examples and a logical way of introducing and explaining the material. And because I rarely read a technical book sequentially, I rely heavily on the table of contents and index to help me find what I need. Both of these resources are excellent in this book.

This book is great for readers who know something about programming and who are new to Flex.
The pace is steady, the examples are apt, and all code is available for download. By the end of the book, a reader will be able to write useful applications from scratch with full benefit of the AIR desktop and Flash player for browser-neutral applications.

I'm a Java Programmer and actually I found this book very useful to learn Flex 3.
Being a newbie to Flex, within a week I was able to get started on Action Script and Mxml.
If you're new to Flex, this IS the book. There are other advanced books, but for beginners this is a good book
that walks you through the installation process for Flex Builder, Action script/MXML programming with a case study.

Even though the book doesn't come with a CD, you can download just one zip file from their website, which has all the sample code.

Pros:
1. Explains well about the GUI components, Layouts and event handling/custom events.
2. Flex and Xml & Flex and Data and my favorite chapters that deal with Flex/XML interaction and connecting flex UI to a data source.
3. Even though, the chapter about AIR is short, it is kind of neat and covers the basic information for developing AIR applications with a Hello World.

Cons:
1. It would've been nice, if the book had some information on Flex and Web Services, by cutting short the printing chapter.
2. I was expecting some info about how sockets and security are handled. But had to google and find out about Flash player Security and creating TCP sockets.

Over all, I would recommend this to any one who is a beginner to Flex. This book can really give the reader a head start and lay a foundation for Flex Basics.

I totally loved this Flex book. I've read almost all the books on Flex and this is definitely one book that is worth your money. Even if you are a total beginner to Flex, it provides really useful information about the soft and it even takes you trough the installation process ( step by step ) and the examples are just great.

Great book, worth every penny.