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Adobe Flex 3: Training from the Source | 
 enlarge | Authors: Jeff Tapper, Michael Labriola, Matthew Boles, James Talbot
Publisher: Adobe Press
Category: Book
List Price: $59.99
Buy New: $33.54
You Save: $26.45 (44%)
New (45) Used (14) from $30.98
Rating:  26 reviews
Sales Rank: 43495
Media: Paperback
Edition: 2
Pages: 656
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.5
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 7.3 x 1.6
ISBN: 0321529189
Dewey Decimal Number: 006.7
EAN: 9780321529183
ASIN: 0321529189
Publication Date: April 6, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand new book. Shipped from our NYC store. Slight Shelf wear to cover. Pages are clean and unmarked.
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Product Description
Part of the Adobe Training from the Source series, the official curriculum from Adobe, developed by experienced trainers. Using project-based tutorials, this book/CD volume is designed to teach the techniques needed to create sophisticated, professional-level projects. Each book includes a CD that contains all the files used in the lessons, plus completed projects for comparison. In the course of the book, the reader will build several Web applications using Flex Builder incorporating MXML and ActionScript 3.0. This title covers the component framework for Rich Internet Applications, Adobe Flex 3.0. New Flex 3 features covered in this edition are: the advanced DataGrid, Data Connectivity Wizards, Modularizing the Flex application, and options for deploying your Flex project with AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime).
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| Customer Reviews: Read 21 more reviews...
Good for getting your feet wet November 24, 2008
B. Davis
Adobe Flex 3: Training from the Source is definitely a good start to learning Flex. The book goes through a tutorial style method of creating an online shopping cart. While I did learn a lot about how Flex functions, and the basics of actionscript, this isn't the end-all, be-all Flex book.
One annoying thing about the book is the introduction of a new concept, and the author will tell you right off the bat that it is bad practice. They later show you the correct way to create/write what they want you to know, but it'd be nice if they showed you the right way up front. While the sample site created in the book is good, it isn't very "real world" enough. The layout of the items is very basic, and the datagrid used to display the cart contents isn't very attractive.
Despite its cons, the book does a great job of teaching you mxml and actionscript. The book also goes beyond, and teaches you the basics of shared libraries, debugging, and performance tuning.
 Mixed feelings ... November 5, 2008
john Middendorf (Colorado)
This book has a lot of information and techniques in it that are core to learning Flex. However, in the end it makes a poor reference book. The tutorial is really creating three different applications which work as one, it is not extremely complex, but definitely not simple either.
Sometimes a chapter will have you working on three different concepts for each of the applications, but in the end I would rather see individual chapters working on each application individually. It's a bit odd, because you might do a number of steps in one chapter, but you don't see the results of that effort until several chapters later. Sometimes it is necessary because everything is interlinked, but I think the authors should rework the strategy for Flex 4, with concepts separated out better, rather than all thrown together.
In the end, there's lots to learn from this book, but trying to find information afterwards is pretty much confusing because of the layout.
 The ultimate Flex 3 code-along tutorial October 23, 2008
Scott Gardner (Central IL)
I've worked through countless code-along tutorial style books for a variety of languages. Many of them move you along at a pace that feels at best uncomfortable, lacking explanations and not intuitive to what the target reader might be thinking/wondering as they go along. Not this one. The authors, despite their extensive expertise, write to the reader (that is, someone learning Flex). Instead of lading down the early chapters with theory, and then blitzkrieging a sample app at the end (expecting that you've mastered and fully-absorbed every page up to then), they explain both concepts (theory) and clicks (practical how to) as you go. The result is a natural and enjoyable learning experience. If you like the Head First books, but maybe have had your fair share of the Head First cuteness, you will love this book. It is a Flex development best practices boot camp.
 an awful experience October 12, 2008
Larry Gerndt (Sunnyvale, CA United States)
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
I'm still slogging through this, one of the worst-written books in the history of technical writing. What makes it so awful is that instead just telling you about some code and what it does, they literally tell you in verbal terms what to write for each lline of code: The majority of the book is comprised of this sort of stuff:
"Step 11: While still in OrderConf.mxml, locate the Delivery Date form item. Change the so the text property calls the format() method of the orderFormat DateFormatter on the deliveryDate property of the orderInfo data structure. Be sure to remove the manual date formatting from the last lesson. "
What planet is this author from? You don't tell people how to write lines of code using verbal language. You display a chunk of code and then explain what it does. Finding real information in this book is like panning for gold. I am writing only in hopes of sparing the many good people out there the pain I have been enduring reading this horrible book. Choose another. Any other.
Do not use alone October 8, 2008
James Daniel (Northridge, CA USA)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
This book is good, but only so far. As a step-by-step tutorial it works, just be sure you use the CD that comes with it (there is no website where you can down load the code from the CD). I had some problems with the Flex 3 Builder (Pro) not running the code I entered by hand so I had to use the supplied code to move on. The next problem is that from Lesson 17 on, there are 26 Lessons, you have to run Cold Fusion on your system and everything is based off of what you'd do when connecting to Cold Fusion Based Server. As I plan to be accessing server side functionality using PHP this does me very little good.
On the positive side the first 16 Lessons got me along far enough that I got a good leg up with the Flex 3 Bible and flex 3 Cookbook.
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