Others say...

"Good. Could use some polish."
I got off to a rocky start with the Flex 3 Cookbook. Many of the recipes would be well suited for someone who is just beginning to develop in Flex. If you're a beginner, that's a good thing; if you're a more advanced user (one who has progressed beyond using states and doing your layouts in the designer) it might be a bit of a turn off.

Fortunately there are enough advanced recipes scattered throughout the book (in greater and greater density as you move to later chapters) to keep your interest. Chapters 17, 18 and 19 were my favorites (Browser Communication; Modules and RSL; and AIR, respectively).

My only real criticism of the book is that it bears many of the signs of being rushed to market (i.e. typos, unpolished code). I expect that on a blog, but find it detracting in a book.

There are a handful of recipes I'm surprised made it past the editors, '4.3 Create a Suggestive TextInput' being the worst. Not only is the output terrible, but there's a variable in the code that was undoubtedly part of a previous draft of the recipe, but is not used in the recipe printed in the book. Any developer can appreciate the need to get to market quickly, unfortunately it's not as easy to change a printed volume as it is to change source code.

I would have been happier, and probably given the book 5 stars, if the title had been pushed back another month and greater attention paid to details like these. Overall, I got enough information from the book to make it worth every star I gave it and every dollar I paid for it.

"Missing important chapters"
I would have given this book 5 stars after 2 days of reading except that they should have waited to include at least 3 of the 4 missing chapters. Printing the .pdf's isn't too professional. I would have waited another week or two to include these in the text.

"Essential resource for Flex Developers"
This is a fantastic book. It's filled with well thought out and well written solutions to problems that real world Flex developers actually face. It's a fine update to the original Flex 2 book and works on it's strengths. The material on States, which are very important, is excellent and much appreciated.

The writing is tight. The example code is good. The recipes are relevant. You can't ask for more than that.

A must buy for Flex developers.