Flash.NET - Dynamic Content for Designers with Flash Remoting MX and ASP.NET [Paperback]

Todd Yard (Author), David Neal (Author), Pallav Nadhani (Author), Graeme Bull (Author), Chris Bizzell (Author), Gregg Wygonik (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1590591674 | ISBN-13: 978-1590591673 | Publication Date: July 11, 2003 | Edition: 1

The absolute cutting edge for application development at the moment is using Macromedia's Flash MX (the premier software for designing fantastic looking interfaces) with Microsoft's .NET framework (tremendously powerful server-side technology).

Combining these technologies has been greatly aided by the release of Macromedia's Flash Remoting MX, which is covered fully in this book. Designers and developers involved in the creation of this technology impart their knowledge to you in this book through extensive case studies.

Flash Remoting is not the only way to combine these technologies, however, so this book will fully cover Flash/.NET integration using ASP.NET.

This book is for readers who are looking to integrate their Flash movies with a .NET-enabled back-end. It assumes no prior knowledge of server-side technologies, but does require knowledge of Flash MX and ActionScript.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

This book is for readers who are looking to integrate their Flash movies with a .NET enabled back-end. It assumes no prior knowledge of server side technologies but does require a knowledge of Flash MX and ActionScript.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

After studying theatre in London, then working for several years as an actor in the U.S., Todd Yard was introduced to Flash in 2000 and was quickly taken by how it allowed for both stunning creativity and programmatic logic application—a truly left-brain, right brain approach to production—and has not looked back. He now freelances as a Flash developer in New York City, creating both silly animations and utilitarian applications. His personal work and experimentation can be found at his website, 27Bobs.com.

A bio is not available for this author.

Product Details

• Paperback: 340 pages
• Publisher: friendsofED; 1 edition (July 11, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590591674
• ISBN-13: 978-1590591673
• Product Dimensions: 9.7 x 6.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,648,850 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very thorough but not for beginners, February 10, 2003

By 

John Harpur (Trim, Meath, IRELAND) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Flash.NET - Dynamic Content for Designers with Flash Remoting MX and ASP.NET (Paperback)

This book is divided between accounts of ASP.NET and databases, and their integration with Flash movies. First of all, this is not a book for beginners. You need a reasonable amount of IT under your belt to take advantage of the content. In short you need to know something about programming to pick up the threads in the text.

I found the examples interesting and the last two case studies are quite well elaborated. I found PenPad particularly interesting. The code is downloadable from the authors' website and that makes up forthe lack of a CD (just about).

Throughout the book the authors use C# as the server scripting lanaguage which surprised me. You won't learn C# from thisbook and I suspect that without some background reading, the scripts will seem meaningless.

The database examples (using pubs2) are fairly standard, but again there is the unwritten assumption that you know something about these artefacts anyway. If you don't have a few undergrad CS course under your belt, the two chapters on databases will lose your interest very quickly. The flash elemetns are really introduced to illustrate principles (which I was happy with) rather than develop red hot applications.

Overall, I was pleased with the book. It fills a gap between the traditional programmer and the web designer. The examples are good and reasonably developed.

If I have any reservations, it is that the authors rarely take the time to develop a design before presenting code snippets. Personally I dislike this approach intensely. I find many students unable to decouple their designs from pieces of code and it encourages bad software engineering practices. there is no excuse in a data processing textbook for not throwing up half a dozen flow charts to give a flavour of the control logic. That point being made, I would certainly recommend this book to any reasonably experienced programmer, but not to a beginner.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic fusion of ASP.NET and Flash MX, January 6, 2003

By 

"mtgrimmy" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Flash.NET - Dynamic Content for Designers with Flash Remoting MX and ASP.NET (Paperback)

This book is a great reference for both server side coders and the more flash orientated.

I used this book while migrating our site from classic asp to ASP.Net and didn't have a clue about flash design. This book shows you everything from interacting with web services using flash to using flash to make online drawing apps!!

I would recommend this book to anybody wanting to learn either of these technologies!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars So disjointed, November 4, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Flash.NET - Dynamic Content for Designers with Flash Remoting MX and ASP.NET (Paperback)

A bunch of quasi-authors get together to write a book that ends up being less than useful because one hand doesn't know what the other is doing. Some sections are better than others, but the overall result is still quite poor. Full of errata, mistakes, oversights, and shoddy editing - stay away from this book unless you find it at the deep discount bin for next to nothing.

I hope these guys learn a lesson (whoever runs these books now) and learn not to hire a whole slew of article writers to make a book. They're almost never good this way.