Adobe Flex 2: Training from the Source

Adobe Flex 2: Training from the Source
Authors: Jeff Tapper, Matt Boles, James Talbot, Ben Elmore, Mike Labriola
Published: October, 2006
Publisher: Adobe Press
ISBN-10: 0-321-42316-X
ISBN-13: 978-0-321-42316-0
Pages: 600

Reviewed January 24, 2007
by Kirk Holbrook, Manager
Maine Flash Platform User Group

Wow! I'd recommend this to anyone using Flex 2. The authors have done an amazing job with presenting concepts in a well-organized and compelling manner. The book follows the development of a fictional, on-line grocery store. I rarely follow these step-by-step books as the authors intended, but the concepts in this book evolve as the store is developed, and the exercises are clear and concise. I followed the book right through from beginning to end.

Ive been developing a significant project with Flex 2 for the past 8 months. Im not a newbie as far as Flex or ActionScript are concerned, but I got a lot of really useful information out of this book. Some reaffirmed what Ive been doing, while others gave me tweaks (and a few outright So THATs the way to handle that! moments).

The book does a great job at describing how and why to do most tasks in Flex 2. Looking for a tutorial on how to work with HTTP calls? How about data sets, events, custom components, charting, styles, skins, transitions, printing, shared object, or debugging? Theyre all in there, as well as a few similar exercises done with ActionScript vs. MXML.

The one drawback I see here is in the area of Flex Data Services (FDS). Personally, I think they could have dropped the limited introduction to the many advanced features of FDS and published a separate book on that (which hopefully Adobe Press will do anyway).

The book includes a CD-ROM with a preset, developer copy of ColdFusion to work through some of the exercises. It would have been nice if they had included the FDS components on the CD, too, but it can be downloaded from Adobes website.

At any rate, this is an excellent resource for anyone using Flex 2.