Flex 3 Cookbook: Code-Recipes, Tips, and Tricks for RIA Developers (Adobe Developer Library) (Paperback)

by Joshua Noble (Author), Todd Anderson (Author)
Key Phrases: unit testing, convolution filter, solution add, Flash Player, Flex Framework, Solution Create (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
The best way to show off a powerful new technology is to demonstrate real-world results with it, and that's exactly what Adobe and O'Reilly have done with Flex 3. Through it's Flex Cookbook website, Adobe invited users of the Flex 3 beta to post their own solutions for working with this technology, using O'Reilly's popular problem-solution-discussion format. Website monitors (and authors) Joshua Noble and Todd Anderson chose the most useful solutions for Flex 3 Cookbook. This highly practical book contains more than 200 proven recipes for developing interactive Rich Internet Applications and Web 2.0 sites, including several contributed by Noble, Anderson, and other Flex experts. You'll find everything from Flex basics and working with menus and controls, to methods for compiling, deploying, and configuring Flex applications. Each recipe features a discussion of how and why it works, and many of them offer sample code that you can put to use immediately. Topics include: Menus and controls Containers and dialogues Working with Text List, tiles, trees, and repeaters DataGrid and Advanced DataGrid Renderers Images, videos, and sounds CSS and skinning Building components States and effects Collections, arrays, and DataProviders DataBinding Validation/formatters Charting and data visualization State management, SharedObjects and LocalConnection Working with services and ServerSide communication Working with XML Communicating with the browser Application development strategies Runtime and dynamic shared libraries and modules Working with Adobe AIR Whether you're a committed Flex developer, or still evaluating the technology, you'll discover how to get quick results with Flex 3 using thesethese recipes. Now that Flex is an open source framework, the user community will continue to supply solutions to extend and improve the technology. This Cookbook offers you the cream of the crop.

About the Author
Joshua Noble is a development consultant with three years of experience in building enterprise level applications using Flex integrated with Java, Ruby, ColdFusion, and Microsoft .NET.

Todd Anderson is a Senior Software Developer in the Multimedia Platforms Group at Schematic Boston, and is co-author of *Adobe AIR Instant Results: Create - Modify - Reuse*, a Wrox/Wiley title scheduled for release in spring of 2008.

Product Details

• Paperback: 704 pages
• Publisher: Adobe Dev Library; illustrated edition edition (May 15, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596529856
• ISBN-13: 978-0596529857
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.1 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #38,447 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good. Could use some polish., May 30, 2008

By	J. Dusbabek (USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I got off to a rocky start with the Flex 3 Cookbook. Many of the recipes would be well suited for someone who is just beginning to develop in Flex. If you're a beginner, that's a good thing; if you're a more advanced user (one who has progressed beyond using states and doing your layouts in the designer) it might be a bit of a turn off.

Fortunately there are enough advanced recipes scattered throughout the book (in greater and greater density as you move to later chapters) to keep your interest. Chapters 17, 18 and 19 were my favorites (Browser Communication; Modules and RSL; and AIR, respectively).

My only real criticism of the book is that it bears many of the signs of being rushed to market (i.e. typos, unpolished code). I expect that on a blog, but find it detracting in a book.

There are a handful of recipes I'm surprised made it past the editors, '4.3 Create a Suggestive TextInput' being the worst. Not only is the output terrible, but there's a variable in the code that was undoubtedly part of a previous draft of the recipe, but is not used in the recipe printed in the book. Any developer can appreciate the need to get to market quickly, unfortunately it's not as easy to change a printed volume as it is to change source code.

I would have been happier, and probably given the book 5 stars, if the title had been pushed back another month and greater attention paid to details like these. Overall, I got enough information from the book to make it worth every star I gave it and every dollar I paid for it.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars You've Got Questions, Here are the Answers, July 9, 2008

By	Scott McAllister - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

In my progression as a budding Flex developer I have reached the point where I'm passed the "getting started" tutorials but still not a master of anything with the language. My questions have from general concepts to the much more specific. This book is perfectly tailored to provide the answers I needed.

The format of the publication is set up nicely as it states a problem and then explains a solution. The way I usually judge a book's worth is to attack it with a specific question in mind, and then see how well it helps me solve the problem. The Flex 3 Cookbook passed with flying colors.

I needed some help wrapping my mind around manipulating data in an ArrayCollection. Section 13.1 called 'Add, Sort, and Retrieve Data from an ArrayCollection' guided me to a much better understanding of ArrayCollections. My question was answered, although there was a typo in the example code, hence the 4-star rating rather than 5.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Resource, June 14, 2008

By	Garth D. Braithwaite (Las Vegas, NV) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The Flex 3 Cookbook is an amazing resource, and it should be found in the library of any Flex developer. Its solution based training provides motivation for completing projects while filling in potential gaps of knowledge. Not the definitive book, but an excellent resource.