Foundation Flex for Designers [Paperback]

Greg Goralski (Author), LordAlex Leon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 24, 2008 | ISBN-10: 1590598776 | ISBN-13: 978-1590598771 | Edition: 1

All Flex applications look the same—a blue-gray background and silver-skinned components—right? That doesn't have to be the case, though. This book shows you how to ensure that your Flex 2 and 3 projects stand out from the crowd and provide your users with an application that is both visually stunning and beautifully functional.

Flex Builder, coupled with the Adobe Creative Suite (CS3), is a powerful combination, providing all the tools you need to create compelling, vibrant interfaces. This book guides you through creating applications with Flex Builder, designing layouts in Fireworks, creating custom skins for your components in Photoshop and Illustrator, and using CSS to enhance the appearance of your rich Internet applications (RIAs).

You'll learn how to efficiently use and style states, enabling you to switch between "pages", thus adding real depth to your applications. You'll also learn how to build web forms that are intuitive to use, helping your users provide the information you're after.

Your Flex applications no longer have to be contained within a web browser window—Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) enables the creation of desktop applications. This book explores giving an AIR application a truly custom shape and style, leaving the rectangular form that defines most applications far, far behind.

Flex isn't just for programmers; it's time for designers to take back RIAs and show what that "R" really stands for. The Internet is not just about collecting data—it's about visual communication and giving people a rich user experience, and that's what designers do best.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Greg Goralski is an interdisciplinary interactive designer based in Toronto. He is an alumni of the Canadian Film Centre Media Lab and the Interactive Project Lab. He has won gold at the National Post Design Exchange Awards and has presented his work at numerous festivals, including the World Expo in Aichi, Japan. As a professor at the Humber College School of Media Studies, he divides his time among playing with technology, training the next generation of interactive designers, and being inspired by his students. Greg also drinks too much coffee, and should really be living on a beach. His website is GregGoralski.com.

LordAlex Leon is an active member of the Flash community and a well-respected industry leader with more than seven years of experience creating content and applications for the Internet and devices. He is the founder of LordAlex Works™ (LAW), a Flash platform consultancy firm based in Montreal, helping new media and content providers deliver intelligent, rich Internet content and powerful applications based on the Flash platform. LordAlex runs a personal blog dedicated to the Flash platform and related technologies that you can read at LordAlex.org. You can find LordAlex in his spare time writing tutorials in English, French, and Spanish or speaking at international events and conferences. LordAlex also runs the local official Montreal Adobe User Group, the largest AUG in the province of Quebec.

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: friendsofED; 1 edition (January 24, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590598776
• ISBN-13: 978-1590598771
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,743,638 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars When you need to make Flex pretty, December 30, 2009

By 

maker of neat things - See all my reviews

This review is from: Foundation Flex for Designers (Paperback)

First off, this book has received bad reviews for not being technical enough, but frankly that's not the scope of the book. If you're not familiar with Flex and looking to learn Flex Builder and the Flex API, this is not the correct book. It's sister from friends of Ed will serve you much better:

Foundation Flex for Developers: Data-Driven Applications with PHP, ASP.NET, ColdFusion, and LCDS

As a hybrid designer/developer with 7 years experience developing complex applications in Flash, I've been making the switch to Flex. I found that once I had a grip on the basics of Flex, I was left with a conundrum. "OK it works, but how do I make it pretty?" Coming from Flash where it's really easy to just draw a graphic and be done with it, Flex will seam a bit stark. Flex for Designers came to the rescue in my hour of need. It clearly explains how to style the Flex components with CSS, and various ways of using graphics generated in Flash, Fireworks, Photoshop & Illustrator.

If you're a designer working with a Flex developer to generate graphic resources, this book will show you multiple ways to do so, so you can choose the best techniques for your work flow. It will not, however, teach you how to make working applications in Flex.

Most of the information in the book is available elsewhere but often buried within other concepts or spread all over the net. This book is an indispensable guide for making the Flex components look the way you want them to, from simple style changing to completely custom graphcis.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Author does NOT support his examples, September 11, 2008

By 

W. Anderson (New England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Foundation Flex for Designers (Paperback)

Chapter 2, make your first program, an RSS reader. The link he gives, to his own site and critical for the success of the example program, is dead.

The rest of the book is of equal quality.

Very poor book all around.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Issues but response is Great, February 25, 2008

By 

C. T. Macdonald "varmac" (dighton Ma USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Foundation Flex for Designers (Paperback)

I was really excited about this title I have been wanting to learn Flex! As a Flash Interactive Designer I wanted to learn how to do what I can in Flash in Flex. I received the book I quickly scanned it , looked at the lessons it looks AWESOME! I am excited. I open the book follow the instructions I realize I need Flex 3 ...OK that's fine I go get the beta, removing the earlier version first I now have 90 days with Beta 3 ...cool...

I open the book begin the lesson and I am met with a errata error it seems that Adobe changed the Beta from the one used in the book ..the instructions tell me to right click and select the anchor point ...there are no anchor point or a context menu??

So I did what every designer would do, I think ? I went to the books web site lookng for Errata...NONE!, Looking for a contact NONE! Filled out the eratta form an submitted but I was anxious so I went to one of the authors blog Lord Alex and sent a email titled "Can't use the Book"! He replied with in hours! Wow! He said it appeared I was right Adobe had changed the Beta versions and he would work out a solution...well he was better than his word..he posted a animated screen capture on the steps to complete, and aided me in debugging..

I completed the lesson and on to lesson 2....I will keep you informed!

Just let me say thanks to Lord Alex his book is just what I need to get started and he has been great...FOE still has not posted an errata page yet though... FOE get on it ,please!