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Brett Merkey (Palm Harbor, FL United States) –

  

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The authors do a good job introducing the concepts and techniques of Flash-based Flex programming. Much of the content is directed at developers completely new to creating Flash content although familiarity with an object-oriented programming language and the latest trends in JavaScript (see my other reviews for examples) is recommended.

I won’t recapitulate the chapters, which are given above in the editorial review. I just want to point out that the chapter order is not random but based on the authors’ step-by-step approach though basic concepts.

To follow the examples you will need either:
– the free Flex SDK and your favorite code editor
or
– a trial version of Flex Builder

I give the authors credit for doing the extra work to show both alternatives in the samples. Believe me, the Flex Builder way takes far fewer steps!

I was disappointed with two things:
1) The URL for the book Web site was wrong. When I did find the book page on the O’Reilly site, there was no code download link. Since many code snippets were quite extensive, this lack is more than an inconvenience.

2) Each chapter stood more or less on its own. There was no integrated example to build upon from chapter to chapter.

This book fills in the gaps of the official Flex documentation and helps get you comfortable quickly with Flex.
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D. King (Berkeley, CA United States) –

  

I picked this book up and felt like I was sliding right into Flex. The concepts are familiar, the book lays the concepts out logically, I installed Flex Builder and did an initial HelloWorld and thought “This will be fun!”

After reading a couple hundred pages, I wanted to start a project. This is where the problems with the book hit me. The topics are covered at a very superficial level, and without any hands-on exercises. You don’t proceed through simplistic but pedagogically useful example scenarios. I’m now reviewing the book, and its too-scant index (which makes it an unacceptable reference later), and realizing that I gleaned little about how to construct an application. How do I hook the MXML model to my ActionScript classes that provide the controllers? There’s a VERY brief chapter on the life cycle of Flex apps and I’m sure I’ll be able to figure this out because I’ve done similar things, but this is more a theoretical discussion of the concepts behind Flex than a how-to on programming Flex. Tastes great, (but) less filling. My guess is that a better hands-on Flex book plus a good ActionScript 3.0 book would be a much better choice, both for learning and for later reference.

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