Others say...

"Good intermediate book"
I have been working with Flex off and on and still have some questions about things. I am not a codewhore; there is still a little spring left in my derriere. I like to get things done. In that regard, this book has been a real help in terms of finding solutions to common problems or issues related to the Flex framework. It does not delve deeply into Actionscript 3.0 and design patterns, but rather how to work specifically with MXML, Flex components and events. It has been really easy to find things and the author explains some more of the complex ways to work with Flex in a very practical manner that builds confidence.

Flex is deceptively simple-looking from the design view, but can get rather complex under the hood. The Expert tips sections are very helpful in that they acknowledge more abstract ways to work that you will probably be using over some of the more simple code illustrations.

For advanced actionscripting, check out "Advanced ActionScript 3 with Design Patterns". If you are trying to wrap your head around Flex and don't know where to start, "The Essential Guide to Flex 2 with ActionScript 3.0" is a good choice.

Additionally, there are a number of actionscipt books out there, and I would advise going to a bookstore to really get a feel for it. Some programming books assume no knowledge and other books assume you're coming from another language, etc.

"Excellent resource for practical real examples"
This is the perfect resource to have on your desktop while developing. When I bought it I was searching for a book different from the Flex Documentation released by Adobe. In fact I bought other Flex books that seemed like a copy (or something like that) of the Adobe Flex Livedocs.

The book (almost 1000 pages of Flex code) covers subjects of interest for developers with any level of Flex expertise. Within each chapter (14 in total), several problems are tackled and a lot of pages are devoted to each problem, with this format: the problem, what's involved, How to build it, and Expert tips.
The book has been updated to cover some of the new Flex 3 features such as the AdvancedDataGrid, the new charting components features and AIR development.

This could also be a book you'd use to learn Flex from scratch, but you'll better appreciate it if you'll use it on a regular basis as you continue to expand your Flex knowledge.
A great time saver and required resource for Flex develoeprs.
Highly recommended.

"Errors, source code is unavailable"
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.

"Lame..."
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.


"Very interesting book"
This is a pretty interesting book. Friends of Ed has so many Flex books right now (AdvanceED Flex Application Development, Creating Mashups with Adobe Flex and AIR, Flex Solutions - Essential Techniques, Foundation AS 3.0 with Flash CS3 and Flex, Foundation Flex for Designers, Foundation Flex for Developers, and The Essential Guide to Flex 3) that I was quite curious to see what unique angle each book has.

For disclaimer purposes Friends of Ed did send me copies of all their recent Flex 3 books for review. I don't know Marco personally, but I know of him through my involvements in the Flex Community.

First I have to give props to Marco Casario; for books of this size it usually takes 4-5 authors to pull it off in a reasonable amount of time. I remember reading on his blog when he first started writing it, and a short time later writing how it's in print... I was *SHOCKED* at how fast he did it!

Let me rephrase that - I'm still shocked! That is an amazing accomplishment.

If you've read my other tech book reviews, I view books from the angle of 3 dimensions: range of complexity (let's call that depth), detail, and breadth (number of topics).

You can't go buckwild and be high on all three otherwise you end up with a 3000 page book (seriously). This is because not only can you go into a lot of detail on each feature of Flex, but there's also things related to Flex that you can write entire books on if you wanted to (AIR, LCDS, the frameworks, GraniteDS, CS3 integration, Thermo, Coldfusion, testing frameworks, etc...)

Likewise, different demographics have different needs. E.g. a newbie wants to know how to make a form and list stuff, where as an expert wants to know how can he get away with linking in the least amount of the Flex framework for as small memory footprint as possible. Or a newbie doesn't care that the basic visual building block is based on the Sprite class, so you only stress out a newbie with all that extra detail that they think they need to know it, when they don't.

Anyways, the unique angle that this book takes is it goes over all the usual stuff in Flex land (validators, formatters, controls, data services, etc...) - and then Marco shows you the known techniques that experts might do/use/or know about.

So it's kind of a "this is a quick recap of what you probably already know - and this is what you need to know next" pattern.

I wouldn't recommend it for new users - the complexity range is intermediate to advanced intermediate. It's moderate on detail, and prefers to dedicate more space on the variety of topics as it assumes you already know all the basics.

I agree with the other reviews, it's on the reference book side of things; so when you're working on a project and say you're working on putting in some validation... that's when you'd whip open this book to go "is there a better way of doing this compared to what I'm already doing?"