6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Super fast and fun way to kickstart your Flex skills, December 9, 2009
This review is from: Hello! Flex 4 (Paperback)
If you've been thinking about Flex, or know someone who wants to get a basic understanding in a very short amount of time you'll want to check out Hello Flex 4 by Peter Armstrong.
This short 234 paged book is an action packed light hearted casual read for programmers who are curious about Flex but may not be at the point where they want to invest a ton of time until they get a general understanding of how it works and if it's a right match for them.
The tone of the book is laid back, and Peter doesn't bore you with exhaustive detail, while at the same time there are small cartoons to keep it fun. Structure wise the approach uses sessions/labs to demonstrate concepts, and these sessions provide real working code. As each session progresses it builds upon the last - leading up to a full blown application.
So the examples are small and easy to understand, while at the same time being practical that you could then apply for you own purposes. In the very last chapter he's a bit gutsy by incorporating the Cairngorm MVC framework as part of the lab... Cairngorm is a pretty heavy duty topic, so my reaction was would using it in a introductory book be good idea?
Well, if you really wanted to get an honest quick feel if Flex is right for you, you might as well get a taste of what a framework driven Flex application would look like. To my surprise though, Peter pulls it off, and makes Cairngorm digestible (especially considering the reader may not have any prior Flex/ActionScript exposure) by keeping it simple, to the point, and clear about what it's role is in a Flex application.
So overall, for a quick read and low price, this is a great way to jumpstart your Flex skills. There's currently a promotion where you can get the book for a measly $10 by using discount code hf410 (I think it ends at the end of the month).
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Manages to cover nicely some in-depth topics while still remaining a great introductory text., December 8, 2009
This review is from: Hello! Flex 4 (Paperback)
I wish this book had been available when I started developing in Flex. A mashup app for the books project is a great choice. Pleasantly surprised to see that low-level flash sprite programming (for Yahoo map markers) was included. I had struggled with that and good resources are hard to find. Discussion of Cairngorm is good. Discussion of RIA in general is good. Very complete coverage of the topics, delivered succinctly with lots of code - I like that.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Too little and too much., February 27, 2010
This review is from: Hello! Flex 4 (Paperback)
This book was a strange mix of a surface level coverage of some Flex 4 topics together with a complex final example involving Cairngorm that took up 20% of the book. I was hoping this would be a good introduction to at least what's new or different in Flex 4, but I came away disappointed. I should point out that the book does mention some of the key differences between Flex 3 and Flex 4, but most of what this book presents can be had in online tutorials and blogs.
The Manning "Hello" series purports to be a way to "learn a new technology without getting bogged down in too many details", but to me it seems more like a way to get a brief taste for a technology without learning much about it. In any case, for most technologies, if you don't want to see the details, you really won't be able to do much with the technology.
If you can get the eBook version of this book on promotion for $10 like I did it is worth reading, but beyond that I simply can't recommend it.
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