Professional Adobe Flex 2 (Programmer to Programmer) (Paperback)

~ (Author), Simon Barber (Author), Renaun Erickson (Author)
Key Phrases: mxml file, swc file, professional flex, Flex Builder, Data Management Service, Done Figure (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Wrox's Professional Flex 2 is one of the first guides to Adobe's (Macromedia's) new web application development platform. Flex experts Simon Barber, Rich Tretola and John Bennett share their experience with Flex 2, and teach readers how to leverage the platform to build rich internet applications. Professional Flex 2 relies heavy on practical examples, making this a hands-on guide that will get readers up and running with Flex 2 quickly.

Topics include:

• Building applications with Flex Builder
• Flex programming model
• Using Actionscript 3.0
• Developing applications in MXML
• Creating UIs with Flex controls and containers
• Data access and interconnectivity
• Creating custom flex components
• Charting
• Testing, debugging and deploying Flex applications
• and more

From the Back Cover

If you want to learn how to create robust, scalable applications using the power of Flex 2, then this is the book for you. This book walks you through all aspects of this powerful software and shows you how to build your own custom components. You'll gain a thorough understanding of the Software Development Kit (SDK), Flex Data Services (FDS), Flex Builder 2 Integrated Development Environment (IDE), Flex Charting, and much more.

Integrated throughout the pages, you'll find best practices that will enable you to begin developing and deploying applications in Flex 2 that meet your requirements. You'll also discover the most effective ways to use frameworks, MXML, and ActionScript 3. And with the help of numerous practical examples that you can tweak and apply in your own environment, this hands-on guide will quickly get you quickly up and running.

What you will learn from this book

• Steps for developing an application using Flex Builder

• How to build customized user interfaces with Flex controls and containers

• Ways to access data and chart components

• Tips for creating and extending Flex components

• Methods for programming and data typing ActionScript classes

• All about integrating Flex 2 with rich media and external applications

• How to use the Cairngorm framework, the Flex-Ajax bridge, ActionScript 3.0 libraries, and more

Who this book is for

This book is for programmers and Web developers who want to create Internet applications using Flex 2. You should have prior experience with Flash, ActionScript, and an XML-based language.

Flex apps you'll develop in this book

• Learn to leverage Flex Builder 2 for RIA development
• Discover how you can use Flex Charting to visualize data
• Integrate your Flex applications with data from web applications like Flicker
• Learn to use rich media in Flex apps

Wrox Professional guides are crafted to make learning programming languages and technologies easier than you think, providing a structured, tutorial format that will guide you through all the techniques involved.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 720 pages
• Publisher: Wrox (May 29, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470102675
• ISBN-13: 978-0470102671
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #687,344 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Gem!!, June 9, 2007

By	joshspoon "http://www.joshspoon.com" (DAL USA) - See all my reviews

I just spent 3hr. at Barnes and Noble reading this book.

This book has what is lacking in O'Reilly's Programming Flex 2.
There is much more info on Flex 2.0.1. It give you a competent example on creating a YouTube viewer w/ Cairngorm. That is something I've wanted to know but most blog post are convoluted about the subject. The examples on flex-ajax bridge are nice and give also a practical app.

Their is detailed info on component life cycle, building modular app, component extension and dynamic app build. No to mention great ways to use the command line and/or Flex Builder. It allows you to have vision not just direction. You see the examples and think, "That gives me an idea".

OH, LOTS OF ACTIONSCRIPT USE!!!! for all of you low-level lovers.

RESULT
This books is a all around good book. It balances reference and examples well. It has pictures to see what you are making. The flow is just right not to fast not to slow. They didn't glaze over on any subject that was written. Everything is detailed

Buy it and if you need anything else just go to the flex documentation

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars The editor should be fired., July 24, 2007

By	A Flex Developer "Flex-er" (Boston MA USA) - See all my reviews

I was glad to hear of this book being published since, until recently, there were so few Flex 2 books available. However, I am deeply disappointed in it. While the content covered is comprehensive, it has a zillion errors in it including referencing functions, classes or variables by a wrong name, as well as typographical mistakes. Also, the writing style is not of the quality I would expect in a book self-titled "Professional". I would not recommend this book at all until it's been massively re-edited.

15 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Take Your Game to the Next Level, June 11, 2007

By	Tariq Ahmed "DopeJam.com | CFlex.net | FlexIn... (Tracy, CA USA) - See all my reviews

As part of my community involvement (www.cflex.net and www.dopejam.com), one of my goals is to have read every Flex book there is so that I can advise people when they're looking for a book which book is right for them. The amount of Flex 2 books out there is awesome, and we're definitely far away from being able to say there's "too many options". Currently I've read The Essential Guide to Flex 2 w/AS3, and am reading RIAs w/Adobe Flex and Java, and Programming Flex 2 - The Comprehensive Guide.

All of the books I've read so far have been great, and having 8 yrs of experience in the Knowledge Management industry, if the content is relevant and accurate, it's valuable. Each of the books have different approaches, breadth, and depth of subject matter. So I wouldn't say one book is better than another - more important is to find the book that best matches how you learn, where you're at learning curve wise, and how committed you are (do you want to just know enough to make some cool CRUDs, or become an extreme RIA ninja).

One of the things I've found with Flex is it's very difficult to talk purely about one subject without having to reference surrounding topics to make examples have some kind of context. E.g. it's hard to talk about Effects without mentioning Events. Do you cover all of ActionScript up front, or try to integrate AS understanding as you go along piggy backing on other subjects?

So there's two ways to tackle this - introduce a lot of things at once, and as the book goes along you progressively increase on depth; or topic by topic you lay it all down, so that once that topic is covered you can utilize that info in subsequent topics if you need to.

Both are valid approaches, and all I would say is consider what kind of learner you are. Do you like knowing a little about a lot upfront to get a big picture, or do you find that too overwhelming and just want very focused topics and know all that there is to know about that topic.

At the same time, if you wanted a lot of width and breadth, you'd end up with a 3000 page book. So look at the chapter listing of all the books you're considering and see how many topics they cover, if it's A LOT of subjects and roughly the same amount of pages of another book, you're going to get more breadth and depth. And vice versa, fewer topics over the same amount of pages is usually indicative of depth.

Recently I finished Professional Adobe Flex 2, by Rich Tretola, Simon Barber, and Renaun Erickson. I've actually had the pleasure of knowing both Rich and Renaun for awhile and met them in person at Adobe MAX 06, and hope to meet Simon at some point. I know from first hand knowledge that these guys are extremely knowledgeable at Flex, and what I would classify as extreme experts.

Though that doesn't necessarily translate into the ability to write well - but fortunately they have the skill, and you can see from their blogs that they're passionate about teaching and sharing knowledge.

This is a good sized book weighing in at 687 pages - and the approach they take is cover a lot of things at once, and progressively ramp up in complexity. The content leans towards the breadth side of things, but they quickly jump straight into deep territory in the sense that they reveal the low level details of how Flex works. With that being said, although a useful book to have as a beginner, they don't spend too much time on "newbie" stuff, and focus more on real world issues you'll encounter. One highlight of the book is the examples; they're very practical and universal, and you get some useful nuggets of code you can use in your real world applications.

I'd recommend this book to anyone, but those that will get the most out of it are intermediate level users who've conquered the rudimentary basics Flex and want to take their game further, and need that next level of understanding. It's also a decent reference book if you want to quickly brush up on a certain topic, or if you're struggling with and issue and need further understanding on the subject to conquer it.