Flex 3 Bible |  | Author: David Gassner
Publisher: Wiley
Category: Book
List Price: $44.99
Buy New: $25.38
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Seller: indoobestsellers
Rating:  12 reviews
Media: Paperback
Pages: 978
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3.3
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 7.4 x 2.5
ISBN: 0470287640
Dewey Decimal Number: 006.76
EAN: 9780470287644
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Flex your development muscles with this hefty guide Write programs using familiar workflows, deliver rich applications for Web or desktop, and integrate with a variety of application servers using ColdFusion, PHP, and others-all with the new Flex Builder 3 toolkit and the comprehensive tutorials in this packed reference. You'll learn the basics of Flex 3, then quickly start using MXML, ActionScript, CSS, and other tools to create applications that can run on any browser or operating system. - Install and learn how to use Flex Builder 3
- Explore MXML, ActionScript 3, and the anatomy of a Flex application
- Lay out Flex controls and containers, and use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to create look and feel
- Incorporate Advanced List controls, Flex charting components, and data entry forms
- Integrate your Flex applications with a variety of application servers
- Create cross-operating system desktop applications with Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR)
Companion Web Site
Visit www.wiley.com/go/flex3 to access code files for the projects in the book.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 12
Thorough coverage by a real teacher September 18, 2008
Dean R. Pittsinger (New York)
18 out of 19 found this review helpful
This 900+ page book is a seriously meticulous walk-through of all the essential aspects of developing Flex applications as of the Flex 3 release. After a tiny bit of history, the author wastes no time in getting right to the Eclipse IDE in it's Flex 3 incarnation. One indication of the thoroughness of this book is in the fact that he spends 7 pages entirely devoted to the "html-template" folder within a Flex project! And I don't know how many other Flex books out there (as I write this in 2008):
* Show you how to override the clone() function for event bubbling
* Describe the use of Flex 3 advanced layout constraints like constraintRows and constraintColumns
* Spend 6 pages showing you how to create skinning graphics in Flash CS3
* Describe the all-important facts surrounding switchable-container creation policy and deferred instantiation
* Show you how to use the BindableComboBox that comes with the ColdFusion Extensions for Flex Builder
* Walk you through how to group flat data with the GroupingCollection and the Advanced DataGrid
* Show you how to install and configure a Flex-BlazeDS-Java application
* Show you how to configure and develop a Flex-Coldfusion application
* Show you how to create a Flex-ASP.NET application
* Show you how to create a Flex-PHP application
It is a testament to the depth of the Flex API and to the inherent complexity of ANY serious front-end development platform that I can say that even with this book, there are still some pretty important things that are not covered. There's no coverage of the History Manager or deep linking, no coverage of the ExternalInterface API, no coverage of how to use Cairngorm or other frameworks to keep a large application from becoming a tangled mess. But the book is already pretty darn thick, and it had to end somewhere. Basically, I think that with this book plus a good book devoted to ActionScript 3, the motivated novice-to-intermediate Flex developer would be good to go. Excellent book.
True to its title October 13, 2008
Scott Gardner (Central IL)
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
I've watched both of David's lynda.com video series (Flex 3 Essentials and Beyond the Basics, which are excellent by the way), and I am now reading this book. His depth of knowledge is apparent, yet his ability to convey the simplest to the most complex topics in an easy to understand and logical manner are what really separate his books/videos from the pack. He's not afraid to tackle the more complex subjects that many books state, "are beyond the scope of this book," with amazing clarity. In particular, his coverage of data services is unparalleled in current works. While there are many excellent books out there on Flex that whet your appetite, this one satisfies it. This book is structured so that you can read it cover to cover or jump to a specific section that interests you (it is excellently cross-referenced, within itself and to resources on the Internet), which makes it quite useful as both a learning tool and desk reference. I only wish was available in PDF format. Complete source code is available at the book's homepage. If you're looking to learn Flex, do yourself a favor and get this book and watch his Flex video series at lynda.com. Thanks David!
Very well written October 21, 2009
Larry Gerndt (Sunnyvale, CA United States)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Today I finished this book, so now I can write the review I wanted to write after reading only a few chapters. Because early on, the reader begins to sense that this book is very well written. The author takes great care to cover all the relevant material, including a lot of interesting things you just won't pick up automatically by "just doing it". Here are my high points:
1) The writing is top notch--both in terms of grammar and conciseness, plus a seemingly sincere care for educating the reader. And virtually no typo's.
2) The book isn't bloated by excessive code listings. Instead, just a few lines of code or a very small complete code example gets the job done.
3) The coverage is very good.
The main thing I think we all want in a technical book of this size is at least some assurance that it's not going to be a waste of our time. I feel confident in giving you that assurance about this book. Admittedly, for me it's a relief to be done reading it, but I'm very glad I did.
Covers advance topic as well beginners November 12, 2008
Software Professional (San Jose,CA)
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
I will just write one line review that beginners will get help but advance level developer will also get benefit. Just read the BlazeDS chapter and messaging it will give you idea.
Get a teacher and his book February 23, 2009
Mark Prouty (Lodi, WI USA)
This is a excellent good book. I am new to Flex and Actionscript 3 but not programming. I felt this book was aimed for someone like me. If you want to learn from a good teacher and his book, buy this book and get the[..]Flex3 Essential training CD. The book's author, David Gassner, also teaches that and does an outstanding job.
Flex and AS3 are comparitivly easy to learn if you have the right teacher. I have built a prototype wesbite for my company using Flex, PHP and MySql. Possibly the fastest way to get up to speed with these tools are this book and CD. I built a pretty impressive prototype application in 5 days without knowing Flex or ActionScript 3. ActionScript 3 is not that much different than any other object oriented programming tool. There was only annoying problem that you might encounter with the training CD. At one point in the training, it uses a font I dont' have and the compiler kept complaining. This happened because I initially skipped the training on CSS and later examples were based on previous ones. The problem is easy to remedy though.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 12
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