Customer Reviews

Flex Solutions: Essential Techniques for Flex 2 and 3 Developers

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

This book mostly takes the reader through lab exercises, creating code in MXML and ActionScript. I have two issues with this book. (1) the sample code is riddled with bugs, typos, etc. You can get the "working" code from the website but cross-checking the book code is tedious. (2) many of the examples didn't exactly exhibit best practices. As a Java/JEE developer I'm not sure I would structure MXML/ActionScript in the way that the author did. Implementing best-practices can also lead to best-understanding.

This is the perfect resource to have on your desktop while developing. When I bought it I was searching for a book different from the Flex Documentation released by Adobe. In fact I bought other Flex books that seemed like a copy (or something like that) of the Adobe Flex Livedocs.

The book (almost 1000 pages of Flex code) covers subjects of interest for developers with any level of Flex expertise. Within each chapter (14 in total), several problems are tackled and a lot of pages are devoted to each problem, with this format: the problem, what's involved, How to build it, and Expert tips.
The book has been updated to cover some of the new Flex 3 features such as the AdvancedDataGrid, the new charting components features and AIR development.

This could also be a book you'd use to learn Flex from scratch, but you'll better appreciate it if you'll use it on a regular basis as you continue to expand your Flex knowledge.
A great time saver and required resource for Flex develoeprs.
Highly recommended.

We've been using Flex on a fairly significant project for about 8 months. I have gotten enough experience that there are only a few chapters that I don't at least have some exposure to. But with that said each 'Solution' has a section at the end called 'Expert tips' which gives me deeper instruction into even the more basic Flex techniques. Some of these things I know how to do, but the expert tips show me a better way or give more insight.

It has more advanced coverage on some things like security, compiling and optimizing your IDE than I have seen in any of the Flex books I have looked at yet. It also peeks into some of the things coming in Flex 3 like the Advanced Data Grid.

All in all I wouldn't say it is a primer for a complete beginner. For that I would suggest the "Training from the source..." book(s) but its the closest thing I have seen to a Flex cookbook yet and the recipes are well covered. It's also not likely to have alot of information for someone with a couple years experience either. But if you have gotten your feet wet with the basics and are starting to look for a good cookbook, I'd say this might be the book for you.

I'm a senior web developer (Ajax and Java plus some knowledge of Actionscript 3) and I was interested in getting more familiar with the use of the Flex framwork for my incresing RIA development needs (a lot of which in enterprise environment). In my opinion the best way to learn a new language or tool is to see how experts use it, and to have a collection of practical, real world examples.

This book illustrates a noteworthy series of real problems and code examples on how to solve them: almost 1000 pages of awesome useful information and over 100 hacks that address common problems a Flex programmer has to face everyday. That's why I would also recommend it for Flex and Flash engineers as an every day reference manual.

What I really appreciated are the "Expert Tips" that the author gives at the end of each solution proposed. This way each solution is deepened and dealt with in an increasingly technical manner, better oriented to advanced Flex programmers.

Another good point is that this book does not replicate the online documentation published by Adobe.

This is a pretty interesting book. Friends of Ed has so many Flex books right now (AdvanceED Flex Application Development, Creating Mashups with Adobe Flex and AIR, Flex Solutions - Essential Techniques, Foundation AS 3.0 with Flash CS3 and Flex, Foundation Flex for Designers, Foundation Flex for Developers, and The Essential Guide to Flex 3) that I was quite curious to see what unique angle each book has.

For disclaimer purposes Friends of Ed did send me copies of all their recent Flex 3 books for review. I don't know Marco personally, but I know of him through my involvements in the Flex Community.

First I have to give props to Marco Casario; for books of this size it usually takes 4-5 authors to pull it off in a reasonable amount of time. I remember reading on his blog when he first started writing it, and a short time later writing how it's in print... I was *SHOCKED* at how fast he did it!

Let me rephrase that - I'm still shocked! That is an amazing accomplishment.

If you've read my other tech book reviews, I view books from the angle of 3 dimensions: range of complexity (let's call that depth), detail, and breadth (number of topics).

You can't go buckwild and be high on all three otherwise you end up with a 3000 page book (seriously). This is because not only can you go into a lot of detail on each feature of Flex, but there's also things related to Flex that you can write entire books on if you wanted to (AIR, LCDS, the frameworks, GraniteDS, CS3 integration, Thermo, Coldfusion, testing frameworks, etc...)

Likewise, different demographics have different needs. E.g. a newbie wants to know how to make a form and list stuff, where as an expert wants to know how can he get away with linking in the least amount of the Flex framework for as small memory footprint as possible. Or a newbie doesn't care that the basic visual building block is based on the Sprite class, so you only stress out a newbie with all that extra detail that they think they need to know it, when they don't.

Anyways, the unique angle that this book takes is it goes over all the usual stuff in Flex land (validators, formatters, controls, data services, etc...) - and then Marco shows you the known techniques that experts might do/use/or know about.

So it's kind of a "this is a quick recap of what you probably already know - and this is what you need to know next" pattern.

I wouldn't recommend it for new users - the complexity range is intermediate to advanced intermediate. It's moderate on detail, and prefers to dedicate more space on the variety of topics as it assumes you already know all the basics.

I agree with the other reviews, it's on the reference book side of things; so when you're working on a project and say you're working on putting in some validation... that's when you'd whip open this book to go "is there a better way of doing this compared to what I'm already doing?"

As a professional enterprise software developer with over 10 years in the biz, I've accumulated a large-ish library of technical books which I have read cover-to-cover. "Flex Solutions" is easily the worst of the lot.
I have only made it through chapter two and have already encountered so many code errors, wretchedly banal examples, and chunks of confusing and poorly worded grammar that I am moving on to a different book.
There is a website which lists some of the Errata, but even the extensive list for chapter one is incomplete.
I don't expect all technology books to be as readable and effective as Horstmann's "Core Java", or be as thorough as the painfully complete "Java Persistance with Hibernate", but a technical manual should at least aspire to accuracy and clarity. On both counts, "Flex Solutions" fails miserably.

For beginners and intermediate users I would give this book a 7 out of 10.

Flex Solutions contains 14 chapters, each divided into a series of solutions for basic flex tasks with background information, a description of what's involved, a code example, and an additional section with expert tips. In my opinion this is a good reference for beginner to intermediate Flex developers. The only other Flex book I have referenced is The Flex 3 Cookbook, but in hindsight Flex Solutions is probably the book I should have started with.

The author uses a problem/solution format for each chapter, starting with simple tasks and progressively introducing more complex solutions for each section. For the absolute beginner, the author doesn't start with explaining the Flex development environment but assumes the reader has access to FlexBuilder before jumping right into the first problem/solution. There is a section related to IDE performance but not until near the end of the book.

I found the contents of each solution clearly written and easy to read with good summaries of the basic knowledge required to handle each problem. Some of the content I already knew and understood. There were many things I did not know or that I was reminded of that made me re-think my own work and how I've approached different problems.

Coming from a JAVA background I am used to having many resources that demonstrate different ways to handle all sorts of problems. Flex Solutions offers many solutions for many basic topics but there is less content related to larger more complex problems. Of course everyone has their personal biases, but It would have been nice to see more solutions provided for issues in developing more complex projects. To name a few: there is little content related to Flex application frameworks. Little is written on how to load test or performance tune a project. It would have been nice to see coverage of third party build tools like Ant or Maven, and there is no coverage of Blaze or the LiveCycle products. To be fair, this is more of a reference book than an Russian novel so I guess there is only so much content that could be covered in the 800+ pages.

I've seen many reviews comment on errors in the code examples, but I haven't had time to try them yet so I can't comment. I've mostly been using this as a reference book and found it to be a useful source for improving my understanding of my own work.