Flex Solutions: Essential Techniques for Flex 2 and 3 Developers (Paperback)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: event target, fault string, fault code, Flex Builder, Flash Player, Flex Sol (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Flex is the quickest and most effective technology for the creation of Rich Internet Applications for the Web. Its extensive library of components and totally customizable framework, combined with the ubiquity of Flash Player, has guaranteed its success.

The ecosystem of products that rotate around Flex 2 and Flex 3 is really broad. Flex Builder, Flex SDK, and Charting Components are all essential parts of the technology that fit the different requirements of web development.

This enormous set of possibilities can easily lead to overload for developers like you. Theres just too much to learn and too many potential places to go when you hit a brick wall. Wouldnt it be nice to have a library of solutions to solve these problems quickly and easily?

This book provides just that, with more than 100 solutions to common problems in one handy volume.

Flex Solutions: Essential Techniques for Flex 2 and Flex 3 Developers faces problems and provides solutions that can be applied to any project, from the most simple to the most complex. The solutions range from customizing Flex components with ActionScript 3.0, using the data models and the ActionScript classes as Value objects, validating and formatting data, using RPC classes to access remote data, to optimizing data-exchange performance using AMF3.

Solutions are also provided for enhancing the security of Flex applications; and techniques are offered for optimizing the actual work environment by increasing the performance of Flex Builder, adding video content, and creating an AIR project to bring your web application onto the desktop.

If you want to learn about and start to develop RIAs in a short time, being immediately productive and mastering the Flex development techniques, Flex Solutions: Essential Techniques for Flex 2 and 3 Developers is the book you need.

In this book you'll:

• Discover real-world solutions for everyday Flex development, saving hours of development time.
• Learn how to customize and extend the Flex Components Model and design and program the look and feel of your Flex applications.
• Learn best practices and tips from a Flex expert for structuring the architecture of Flex applications.
• Use the Flex Remote Procedure Classes to connect to remote data with HTTPServices and the Java Platform, PHP, ColdFusion, WebServices, and RemoteObject.
• Use the new Flex 3 features, such as the AdvancedDataGrid component and the Charting Enhancements feature.
• Port your Rich Internet Applications onto the desktop with Adobe AIR.

What youll learn

• Tips on using Flex components
• How to validate and format data
• How to manage complex data
• Filtering, sorting and using cursors on data with collection classes
• How to consume Web Services using RPC components
• How to display data using list-based controls
• How to effectively compile and deploy Flex applications
• How to customize the look and feel of your applications
• How to make your applications more secure
• How to become more efficient in using the Flex Builder IDE
• Unique tricks such as calculating memory usage, making your Flex application into an active desktop, and customizing states
• How to use the ColdFusion Extensions for Flex Builder
• How to interface your Flex applications with server-side code written in PHP, Java, Rails, and ColdFusion
• Working with Flex in enterprise enviroment using the Flex Data Services, Java Remote Object and AMFPHP

Who is this book for?

This book is for any Flex 2 or Flex 3 developer who is comfortable with the basics and wants to take their knowledge further with quick fire solutions to common problems. Please note that some of the solutions contained in this book require the Flex Builder 3 Professional release of the software.

About the Author

Marco is one of the most dynamic developers and consultants in the Adobe world. He has been passionate about informatics since he was little more than a child and used to program games in Basic for Commodore 64 before dedicating himself, while still very young, to innovative projects for the web using Flash and Director (as far back as versions 3 and 5.) In 2001, he began to collaborate with Macromedia Italia. Since that year he has produced and headed a long series of presentations, conferences and articles, which you can find listed in detail in his blog entitled "hands on Adobe world" (casario.blogs.com,) which is currently receiving several thousands of unique visitors every day. In 2005, Marco founded Comtaste (www.comtaste.com,) a company dedicated to exploring new frontiers in Rich Internet Applications and the convergence between the web and the world of mobile devices&emdash;MobyMobile (www.mobymobile.com) and YouThru (www.youthru.com) are representative of their recent work. Another example of Marco's achievements is that he is founder of the biggest worldwide Flash Lite User Group (groups.yahoo.com/group/FlashLite/) and of www.augitaly.com, a reference point for the Italian community of Adobe users, in which he carries out the role of Channel Manager for the section dedicated to Flex (www.augitaly.com/flexgala.) Marco is currently busy working on the development (in Flex) of a very ambitious project concerning bank counters at European level, and in various consulting and Flex and Flash Media Server training activities for the realisation of Rich Internet Applications on behalf of buyers of the calibre of Capgemini, Engineering, IBM partners, and Adobe Systems Software Ireland Ltd

Product Details

• Paperback: 904 pages
• Publisher: friends of ED (November 26, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590598768
• ISBN-13: 978-1590598764
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 7.5 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 16 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #176,690 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Errors, source code is unavailable, March 5, 2008

By	C. Simons "cs" (Chantilly, VA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Lame..., March 3, 2008

By	Tek - See all my reviews

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.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Starts Off Well - But Too Many Errors and No Corrections, March 29, 2008

By	Bruce Phillips (Kansas City) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.