Customer Reviews

Learning Flex 3: Getting Up to Speed with Rich Internet Applications (Adobe Developer Library)

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

The first thing that stood out is that it's in color! I love color, especially for technical material it adds a whole extra dimension to the medium and another vehicle by which to communicate. Obviously in code listings it makes the code easier to visually digest and mentally break down what you're seeing, and with screen caps color is so much more appealing.

The dimension of the book is wider that normal, which gives the book an extra wide gutter that the publisher is able to leverage. And leverage they do by making use of it for an assortment of side bars, notes, tips, and blurbs.

So aside from the aesthetics, content of course is the key. The book is aimed at beginners who don't necessarily have any sort of programming background - so the audience that this book would appeal to includes anyone interested in learning more about Flex and if it's the right fit for them; as a quick read (only 304 pages) you can blast through this book in a short amount of time.

Who might those people be? Developers wanting to test the waters with Flex because they had heard good things about it, Flash or Web media designers thinking about getting into the development side of things with Flex, and management level folks looking to explore new opportunities and want to get a barometer reading on what it would take to get into Flex, etc...

The writing style is fairly casual, and you feel like the author is talking to you (as opposed to the feeling of a manual). I think the author does a pretty good job at keeping things high level with enough meat to make the reader feel they're actually being productive as they work through the examples.

So I'd recommend this book to someone who wants to get their feet wet with Flex - someone who may not be fully committed to Flex at this point in time and doesn't want to invest a ton of time yet.

* Difficulty Level: Beginner
* Range of topics: Moderate
* Depth of topics: Light
* Development experience needed: None
* Reading Speed: Fast
* Writing Style: Casual

I've worked with Flash and ActionScript for a few years, but I'm new to Flex so I purchased three Flex books and I found this one to be the best one. I like how the author has you build smaller applications that work by themselves but also adds more features to them as the book progresses.

There are some minor code issues, but he answered my questions on his website which is one of the best book websites I've seen [...]. All of the source files and the working applications can be viewed on his site.

I also really enjoy the layout of the new Learning series that O'Reilly has been putting out (similar to the Learning ActionScript 3 book). The color coding and pictures are a nice change from the majority of black and white technical books.

Since the focus of this book is Flex and MXML, newer programmers will need to supplement this book with an ActionScript book once they start to build more advanced applications.

Highly recommended for those who are new to Flex.

I have started to read several Flex books in the past. I say "started", because I quickly lost interest. Many times I found myself scratching my head saying "Why would anyone ever do that?"

This book has been an amazing adventure. The examples are relevant, the writing is entertaining without being off topic, and best of all, within the first 5 chapters I knew enough to make a basic Flex website.

If you have some web design experience with html, and css, then I highly recommend this book!

Let me start off by saying I hate web coding. I hate it. I hate the browser issues, I hate the "hacks" to do something, I hate the whole thing. And as for Flash? Why am I putting action script into a frame, on a time line, to do what now? Things were great and simple when it was HTML 1.0 and CGI. I prefer C, assembly, and Perl, because it just works. Humbug.

However, this book gives me hope that it is worth while to get back in. This is what javascript should have been, this is what java applets should have been. This is Christmas morning for Web 2.0.

This book walks you through an explanation of the syntax of mxml and gives an adequate tool chest of techniques on how to go further and more importantly where you should begin looking. I find just knowing what vocabulary to use when I google will often lead me to other code examples, etc. This book gives you the lingo to start doing that and Mr. Cole seems to know what he is doing and acts and talks in a way that Flex documentation expects him to act and talk, all the while communicating clearly to someone who hasn't the foggiest idea what's the difference between a transition, state, filter or effect...and more importantly how do I use those to make awesome rockin' flash apps already.

I'm not an expert after reading this book. Neither will you be. But, Bravo to Mr. Cole for giving a crash course/overview on action script- assignment, classes, objects, methods, functions, etc. You'll be thirsting for more, and he breaks it down enough to let you know that there is somewhat of a serious programming language behind it.

Also, almost all of the examples are done completely within mxml but with the slightest hint of actionscript. Much better than other examples I've found where it wasn't clear to me what the mxml was doing and what the action script was doing. This book demonstrates the promise of what mxml provides, and that is rapid application development using mxml. Not only that the breadth of what is presented in this book is enough to start doing some real work. However, you'll need to hit up livedocs on adobe's site to go deeper and to get yourself in and out of trouble.

Just as a note: I was able to use Eclipse SDK, some software updates I found on the net, google code's xsd4mxml to trick out Eclipse, and the free flex3 sdk from adobe for all of the examples. Mr. Cole talks about FlexBuilder (a bit), but you don't need it which he readily admits. I did it this way, cuz' I'm cheap like that.

I was beginner to Flex and went through different books and adobe document (excellent & highly recommended for reference). Now after going through the book I feel it is perfect for someone who want to learn Flex (coming from Java or anyother OO language)

It is very well organize plus color text makes it very easy to read (color text is my favorite).

In my opinion must read for beginner who come from Java background (myself)

Alaric Cole succeeds in this book where many others fail. He manages to keep the pace of learning brisk, while providing adequate (and brief!) examples that clearly demonstrate his point without creating more questions. It's easy to read while still covering subject depth.

I wanted to learn Flex 3 so I bought Learning Flex 3 on Amazon.com to learn from scratch. This post is a review of the book.

This is my first book about learning a technology. It means that I am a beginner about getting knowledge from a book and also reading a complex technical book in english.
I am not going to review the spelling of the book but to express the possibility of improvement of the content.

[+] Colorful and clear pages
[+] Easy to read for beginners
[+] Go through a lot of knowledge...
[-] ... and not enough sometimes
[-] Start to be complex after some chapters
[-] Bad use of words resulting in frustration

[+] Colorful and clear pages
At first, the book looks clean and moreover in color which helps a lot when you need to read the source code inside.
When there might be a problem while you exercise, Alaric Cole is always using clear hints on the page side to help going through problems.

[+] Easy to read for beginners
As English as my second language I may have problems on different texts. Learning Flex 3 is easy to read and I devour the book very fast. It is the first time I enjoy that much getting new knowledge.

[+] Go through a lot of knowledge ...
The book has 283 pages. I am pretty sure that it is less than most of technical books but after reading this book, you will be able to write your own Flex application or Air application with form verifications, data providers, visual effects, CSS theming, etc.

[-] ... and not enough sometimes
If you need to create applications, you need to submit some data somewhere. With Learning Flex 3, you won't know how to do it. You are going to learn how to do forms and how to print them on your screen, but you are not going to submit them anywhere. The button submit is no use.

[-] Start to be complex after some chapters
While it might be easy to read for intermediate developers, after few chapters you will encounter some words without definitions. Alaric is using words such as instance which from a beginner point of view means nothing...

[-] Bad use of words resulting in frustration
While sometimes Alaric is not going to tell everything about some aspects, Learning Flex 3 is not about learning Flex itself, otherwise the book would have a huge amount of pages.
The book won't be enough to master Flex 3. I would say that 80% of it is about MXML which is basically a specific language to create visual interfaces. MXML is very useful but is not enough to create a Rich Internet Application. You will need to buy one or two more books to have more knowledge and be confident in developing with Flex.

To conclude, I would say that Learning Flex 3 by Alaric Cole is a good book, easy to understand and good to jump into Flex 3 but the book feels like an appetizer that you need to buy one or two more books about Action Script in order to feed your hunger.

4 stars because the book itself is really good but not perfect, I enjoyed reading it... I think it's a good book about doing interface via Flex Builder.

This is by far the best introductory Flex book on the market, for the following reasons:

1) It's in color. The judicious use of color and fonts in this book made reading the material much easier. The book is literally a work of art. This in itself sets a high bar for anyone planning to write a new tech book. But it's not just the color...

2) It's comprehensive. This book is more than just a great introduction. It covers a lot of ground--all I needed to get up to speed on a complex Flex app I took over at work.

3) It's well written. Alaric might be a programmer, but he must have double-majored in technical writing. Very few authors can write a technical book that is a pleasure to read from cover to cover. The material builds and flows, proceeding gracefully from one topic to the next, showing just the right amount of code, never more than necessary. For this the author has my gratitude.

Summary: Color would be but a novelty if the writing was bad, just as using gratuitous Flex effects would annoy a user. But Alaric isn't out to impress you with his fancy colors. He's out to teach you, and it so happens that the color is part of the means to that end. Get this book, you will not regret it.

You have to know Flex and have just started. You're deep into a really good, technical, Flex book but don't have all that much to show for it yet; set it aside for a while, kick back, relax, enjoy this book. It is easy and fun and gives you almost instant satisfaction with taste of the Flex wow. It will help relieve you of the enormous task you have taken on. It does a very good job of explaining the relatively little it does go over. It also has some good tips.

Learning Flex 3: Getting up to Speed with Rich Internet Applications (Adobe Developer Library) is a fabulous book for anyone who wants to learn how to use Flex 3 effectively. It not only covers the basics of Flex 3, it describes several skills that you will need to develop RIA's. The author Alaric Cole does a great job explaining how to use the tools in Flex. I often get a book that is meant to teach you how to use an application, and find myself scratching my head when I create a project from the book and it doesn't seem to work the way the author describes it (often a step is left out, or 'assumed'. Every tutorial/project I worked through in this book worked great, and I actually understood how to apply what I learned to my own projects. The subtitle of the book is 'Getting Up To Speed With Rich Internet Applications' and that is exactly what this book does for a Flex Designer or Developer. I have used Flex for about 1.5 years now, and feel that I have a pretty firm grasp on Flex and Flash, but I still learned quite a bit from this book.