Flex Solutions: Essential Techniques for Flex 2 and 3 Developers [Paperback]

Marco Casario (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1590598768 | ISBN-13: 978-1590598764 | Publication Date: November 28, 2007 | Edition: 1

Flex 2 and 3 are very hot new technologies from Adobe for creating Rich Internet Applications, which many web developers are embracing. There are a couple of beginner's books out there, but this book is different—it aims to follow on from those books, providing already experienced Flex developers with over 100 real world solutions to common development problems they are likely to come across in their day to day work.

It is written by Flex expert Marco Casario, and will be one of the first higher level Flex books available.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Marco Casario is one of the most dynamic developers and consultants in the Adobe world.

He has been passionate about informatics since he was little more than a child and used to program games in Basic for Commodore 64 before dedicating himself, while still very young, to innovative projects for the web using Flash and Director (as far back as versions 3 and 5.)

In 2001, he began to collaborate with Macromedia Italia. Since that year he has produced and headed a long series of presentations, conferences and articles, which you can find listed in detail in his blog entitled "hands on Adobe world" (casario.blogs.com,) which is currently receiving several thousands of unique visitors every day.

In 2005, Marco founded Comtaste (www.comtaste.com,) a company dedicated to exploring new frontiers in Rich Internet Applications and the convergence between the web and the world of mobile devices—MobyMobile (www.mobymobile.com) and YouThru (www.youthru.com) are representative of their recent work.

Another example of Marco's achievements is that he is founder of the biggest worldwide Flash Lite User Group (groups.yahoo.com/group/FlashLite/) and of www.augitaly.com, a reference point for the Italian community of Adobe users, in which he carries out the role of Channel Manager for the section dedicated to Flex (www.augitaly.com/flexgala.)

Marco is currently busy working on the development (in Flex) of a very ambitious project concerning bank counters at European level, and in various consulting and Flex and Flash Media Server training activities for the realisation of Rich Internet Applications on behalf of buyers of the calibre of Capgemini, Engineering, IBM partners, and Adobe Systems Software Ireland Ltd.

Product Details

• Paperback: 904 pages
• Publisher: Apress; 1 edition (November 28, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590598768
• ISBN-13: 978-1590598764
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.6 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,316,247 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Marco has been passionate about informatics since he was little more than a child and used to program games in Basic for Commodore 64 before dedicating himself, while still very young, to innovative projects for the web using Flash and Director.
In 2001, he began to collaborate with Macromedia Italy. Since that year he has produced and headed a long series of presentations, conferences and articles, which you can find listed in detail in his blog (casario.blogs.com), which is currently receiving several thousands of unique visitors every day.

In 2005, Marco has founded Comtaste (www.comtaste.com,) a company dedicated to exploring new frontiers in Rich Internet Applications and the convergence between the web and the world of mobile devices. Now his focus is on the cloud computing with the Google Apps platform and APIs and Google App Engine.

Marco has dedicated most of his time in sharing his knowledge and project experiences, in fact he is founder of the biggest worldwide Flash Lite user group (groups.yahoo.com/group/FlashLite/) and of www.augitaly.com, a reference point for the Italian community of Adobe users, in which he carries out the role of Channel Manager for the section dedicated to Flex (www.augitaly.com/flexgala.). Recently he also runs the Google Technology User Group in Milan, the Google technologies community (www.gtug.it).

Marco is an Adobe Certified Instructor for Flex 3 an AIR (ACI) and an Adobe CertifiedExpert for: Livecycle Platform, Flash, and Dreamweaver.

He is author of the following book project:

Flex 4 Cookbook (O'Reilly)
Professional Flash Catalyst: Building User Experiences for RIA (Wrox)
AIR Cookbook (O'Reilly)
Flex 4 Cookbook (O'Reilly)
Professional Flash Catalyst (Wrox)
Flex 4 Solutions (FriendsOfED)
Advanced AIR Applications (FriendsOfED)
The Essential Guide to Flash CS4 AIR developmet
Flex Solutions: Essential Tecniques for Flex 3 developers (FOED)

Other co-author and technical editor's jobs are:

Professional Flex 2
Essential Flash 8
Flash Application for mobile devices

Speaking Engagements:

FATC New York
TAC Singapore
MAX Europe
MAX San Francisco
FlashOnTheBeach
FlexCamp London
MultiMania Belgium
FITC
360Flex Europe
AJAXWorld Conference New York
O'Reilly Web 2.0 Summit
Adobe MAX 2007: Extending Flex Components
AdobeLive 2007

Specialties:
Marketing, Sales, Entrepreneurism, Cloud Computing, HTML5, Flex, LiveCycle Data Services, BlazeDS, AIR, JEE, Actionscript 3, Flash, Flash Lite, Google Apps, Google App Engine, GWT

Contact Marco Casario on LinkedIN: http://it.linkedin.com/in/marcocasario
Follow Marco Casario on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/marcocasario

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Starts Off Well - But Too Many Errors and No Corrections, March 29, 2008

By 

Bruce Phillips (Kansas City) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Flex Solutions: Essential Techniques for Flex 2 and 3 Developers (Paperback)

I was really enjoying the first few chapters of this book. The code examples and explanations were done well. But after continuing through chapters 4 through 10, I came across several significant errors in the code examples.

I went to the book's website several times over the past 2 months to try to find an errata published and an updated code download. I even emailed the book's author several times with corrections and requesting that errata be published and a new code download made available.

Even though this book was published in November 2007, as of the end of March 2008, there still is no errata available or updated code download.

Now that Flex 3 is out, I would recommend purchasing one of the new Flex 3 books and skipping this one.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Lame..., March 3, 2008

By 

Tek - See all my reviews

This review is from: Flex Solutions: Essential Techniques for Flex 2 and 3 Developers (Paperback)

I have to say that at first glance, this book seemed like it would be a good intro to Flex (for those with prior exposure to programming).

This was a really fast read because so much of the content was redundant. A huge chunk of this book is dedicated to binding data to controls. And unfortunately, there are a LOT of errors that only lead to confusion. I'm convinced it was rushed simply to be printed as one of the first V3 books on the shelf.

It would have been great to learn more about practical design issues. For instance, encapsulation techniques specific to Flex. However, the few examples that touch on the subject are totally wrong and completely miss the point of loose coupling.

If you buy this book, buy it for the "solutions" it includes. But don't expect to get much more.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Errors, source code is unavailable, March 5, 2008

By 

C. Simons "cs" (Chantilly, VA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Flex Solutions: Essential Techniques for Flex 2 and 3 Developers (Paperback)

I really want to like this book. The examples are useful but are full of errors and mis-named variables galore.

I was tempted to write a positive review until I found that the two Web sites noted in the Introduction as the place to download the source code referenced in the book (every example references the source code examples) are no longer operational. The sites simply no longer exist. How poor.

I do not recommend this book.