The Essential Guide to Open Source Flash Development [Paperback]

Chris Allen (Author), Wade Arnold (Author), Aral Balkan (Author), Nicolas Cannasse (Author), John Grden (Author), Moses Gunesch (Author), Marc Hughes (Author), R. Jon MacDonald (Author), Andy Zupko (Author)

Book Description

Series: Essential Guide To... | Publication Date: July 17, 2008

There are a large number of Open Source tools available for Flash, and this book takes the most popular of those and explains how they work and how to fit them into an existing workflow. Some of these tools are hugely popular, with the most recent version of Papervision3D alone (released in July 07) being downloaded more than 300,000 times and being used in projects for companies such as Nike, Audi, and Le Coq Sportif. This is the only book dedicated to Open Source Flash projects, and is written by the project leads themselves.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

John Grden - With more than seven years of experience in working with Flash technology, he is the creator of the Xray debugger and the FLASC compiler GUI. John also started the Red5 open source server project and is co-project manager along with Chris Allen. John has also served as Director of Flash Plat form with BLITZ and was Sr. Flash Developer with Zing.com.

Chris Allen - Chris Allen is a Senior Flash Engineer at Scholastic’s Tom Snyder Productions in Watertown, MA where he is developing the newest version of Fastt Math, a critically acclaimed e-learning application. He is also co-project manager and a Java developer for the Open Source Red5 project. Chris first started working with Flash beginning in 1999 making websites for bars, restaurants and musicians. Since then he has worked on various projects using Flash as the front end. These include a framework for online portfolio applications, a calendar for musicians, and a clinical messaging system utilizing an XMPP socket server.

Patrick Mineault - Patrick Mineault is a freelance RIA programmer and lead developer of amfphp. He has worked on projects for Microsoft, Toyota, LG, NEC and the US department of education. He has undertaken a bachelor's in math and physics and is enthusiastic about the possibilities of blending Flash and dynamic systems.

Nicolas Cannasse - Nicolas is the author of several popular open source tools, including the MTASC open source ActionScript2 compiler, the haXe crossplatform compiler and the Neko Virtual Machine. He is cofounder and respected member of the OSFlash community.

 

 

Product Details

• Paperback: 408 pages
• Publisher: Apress; 1 edition (July 17, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1430209933
• ISBN-13: 978-1430209935
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #872,650 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars OpenSource Flash Development Book Review, November 21, 2008

By 

jbcurtin.com (Maryland USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Essential Guide to Open Source Flash Development (Paperback)

This book is gold, not only did it answer a lot of my questions about some specific technologies like Red5 and Flash-Develop, but it also gave me a very detailed introduction to AMFPHP. Most of all, a new found respect for Apache Ant.

The book tried to cover so many different topics and so many different aspects of Opensource flash development that it was difficult to jump though the book. A lot of the concepts were basic and meant for a beginner, nevertheless this book will guide you in the ways of creating a open-source development environment more effectively then you would ever be able to discover yourself. Personally I would have liked to see more as3, however they kept it nice and 'open' so that anyone could learn from it.

Overall, this book is getting a 5 because even though some of the content was a little dated.(Like any book) the concepts that it offered were solid. This book was a rare one because I was able to read though it easily. It held my interest the entire time.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars disappointing, September 21, 2010

By 

Ski Bum (Park City, UT) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Essential Guide to Open Source Flash Development (Paperback)

Don't waste your time or money on this garbage!!!! Lousy!!!! i own over 100 technical books, and never have i found one as horrible as this. There is some good info but the type you can easily get from internet documentations. I bought this book because I wanted to learn about integrating flash with red5 and the chapters on red5 were pathetic, for example, under red 5 chapter, page 321, it tells you to go to a url and "download the zip file", no name for the file, no description, just "the file". That's pathetic considering there are many files and none appear to fit the described file needed. Then I go to the web site that is in the book to set up red5 with eclipse and there is nothing there that remotely looks like what is described in the red5 chapter. These people put in a minimal effort. Very very disappointing. Unacceptable for a serious development book. I will never buy any book with Chris Allen or John Grden as authors or contributors,

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding Book, April 1, 2009

By 

Akira Lorrack "Your Daily Dose of Reality" (Bowie, MD USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Essential Guide to Open Source Flash Development (Paperback)

This is definitely a book all serious Flash developers should read. It is the gateway to professional Flash development. The book is written by a collection of some of the most recognizable personalities in the Open Source Flash community. Learn your options as a Flash developer and break free from standard IDEs and workflows. Get introduced to mant external libraries, frameworks, and development tools.

~ Paul Milbourne
Author, Essential Guide to Flash CS4 with ActionScript
Founder, Baltimore Washington Flash User Group