Customer Reviews

Flash and XML: A Developer's Guide

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I have purchased many computer books over the last 12 years. This one was not one of the better written ones. I was very excited to get this book since I have worked with both XML and Flash, but have never tied them together. While the content of each chapter is sufficiently laid out, the material is not explained very well. The authors use a project("The Quiz") that is developed troughout the book. Problem is that the steps for creating the various stages are poorly written and takes several readings to understand what they are doing. The book does not come with a source code CD-ROM as described by Addison Wesley and the website for the book has problems when attempting to download the source. Very frustrating.

Note: this is a Flash 5 book. It contains no Flash MX content. There are significant changes to Flash in the MX version that make some of this book outdated.

This book would be ideal for someone who already knows a bit about each topic: actionscript, php, sql, but hasn't built anything with those languages yet. Maybe a Flash coder who's worked with a server-side programmer on a project, and now has to work alone?

It's decently written, with an occasional sense of humor. The writing is terse, and you won't get more than one explanation of each concept. The information comes thick and fast, with discussions of server protocols, mySQL, and PHP diving right in. Basic introductory material is brief or non-existant. In fact, if you don't already know something about PHP, you couldn't get any of this stuff to work, as you'll have to know how and where to put it on the server.

One very big problem is that there's almost no distinction between "code we're showing you to illustrate a concept" and "code that's part of the application we're building." The authors will often just toss a couple of lines of code into a page, and it turns out to be something that needs to get added deep within a script you've been writing. Miss that line and everything will break.

The Flash code is good, although I wondered why the authors occassionaly used the ancient setProperty syntax and "eq" operators from Flash 4.

You can get this book easily for about a third of the list price, and for that it's certainly worth it, if for nothing but a good introduction to the concepts here.

I have to agree with other users who point out the book's awkward construction. It's sort of a mutant blend of a hands-on how-to book and a broader discussion of Flash and XML. As the authors ramble through the creation of an XML-based quiz engine, they abruptly propose different ways of addressing coding issues, then move on to the discussion of another coding aspect without telling you which of the two or three or four options you should have plugged in in order for the next set of code to work with it.

By mid-2004 this approach is even more awkward as you discover that some of the hands-on steps they tell you to carry out no longer work in Flash MX or Flash MX 2004; there's nothing on the cover or the introductory material to warn you that the authors wrote this for Flash 5.

A great addition to your flash library, but with a few caveats....

First off, this book covers Flash 5, not MX, but most of the logic applies. Second, I am not a newbie to reading technical documentation...I am a software engineer. While the coverage of the technology is very good in this book, the coverage of technique and the process are often hand-waved. You will have to read each chapter through once before turning on your computer and attempting to follow the process. If it were not for the repeated back-tracking and "where did this come from?" feeling while going though the projects, I'd give this book a 5 star rating for understanding Object oriented ActionScripting and XML in Flash as well as integrating Flash with other technologies such as PHP.

Also note, when you are done with this book you should revisit the projects after reading up on the new features of Flash MX, as some aspects are streamlined. Not a criticism of the book, just a note to potential readers.

This is the right book if you are a technologist/programmer interested in learning to work with flash rather than the usually assumed Photoshop jockey who just wants to know enough to put a few buttons in an animation. For a programmer, having to use menus and buttons to insert code is maddeningly slow and frustrating, and this book finally made it clear to me how to actually write scripts (and use the menus if necessary).

The project for the tutorial is a good choice - just enough graphics to get one's feet wet, not enough to be distracting.

And this book is funny, and very readable.

However, the tutorial isn't quite as clear as it looks - in some places the terminology or instructions are slightly different from the menus, or just a bit incomplete. Flash jockeys will probably not notice - but as a newcomer to flash, I got stuck on the most ridiculously simple things. The silver lining was that I learned a lot figuring them out. You will want the Flash documentation handy to supplement.

I used this book to add database capabilities to our flash app, and could not have done it with out it. Well, perhaps that's an exaggeration, but it would have taken *significantly* longer.

Getting flash connected to a database requires a combination of good strategy and lots arcane nitpicking details that span multiple knowledge domains. The book brings you along, step by step, in making the app dynamic. The discussions of database design and implementation via PHP and mySQL were very useful.

The book was written during the day of Flash 5, but aside from a couple of outdated screen shots, the ActionScript is current with the version 7.

There were a couple of places where some explanations were a little light, but all in all, it was worth many times the price I paid for it.

Authors have deep understanding of the subject, which is
eveident in their clear and simple way of explaining things.

This is far and away the best set of paradigms for using Flash in a client-server environment that I have seen. It is not a cookbook, and it doesn't provide a lot of cut-and-paste applications. What it does very well, is to demonstrate how to create a user interface that can access a multi-tiered web system. It is not intended for someone who has neither handled web services nor used Flash. Its examples transfer well to newer versions of Flash, and to environments other than the models used by the authors -- including those that use enterprise-level programming languages and databases.

Some of the discussion may be either too elementary or irrelevant for some readers -- you probably shouldn't be reading this if you've never seen XML or SQL, and the details of the PHP examples aren't terribly interesting if you are handling the server side with something else. However, the details do provide concrete examples, and explain where Flash fits into the mix, and what it can and cannot do.

I wish this book had existed when Flash 5 first came out -- it would have saved days of my life, and a lot of hair pulling. I hope that it will be updated.

I have purchased this book as a recommended text for a university course and have been disappointed.

The text covers the topics I needed to understand, but in a confusing manner - there is plenty of irrelevant content which is meant to build your understanding until optimal solutions are developed at the end of each chapter. I have found this to create more confusion than the benefit it delivers.

It is not that good for a beginner as the early part is poorly written. It does get better though in the later chapters, so more experienced readers may gain some benefit.

Overall I did not find it very readable and have begun using other texts to understand the individual various topics before tackling this text.

I bought this book just by looking at the first few chapters. I liked the sort of pacing that the authors offered. HOWEVER, upon reading further (beginning from around Chapter 7 onwards) I began having difficulties with the exercises and the ideas.

(1) It seems like it's broken up in some parts and it's hard to follow the code. You don't know where to put the code; on a movieclip, on the timeline or in a nested clip.
(2) The code in the book contain errors that would be excusable if they had a decent errata on the website. The website does not have this. The forum doesn't even work.

I'm mixed. The authors are very good in Object Oriented Programming (OOP) but "ok" to "poor" in teaching these ideas. I bought it. It's not worth every dime, but it'll be on my shelf until someone agrees to pay half of what I paid.