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Learning Flex 3
Book Review14 August 2008
by Huw Collingbourne
$39.99 / £24.99
By Alaric Cole
Pages: 304
O’Reilly: http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596517328
Book Web Site: http://www.greenlike.com/flex/learning
ISBN 10: 0-596-51732-7
ISBN 13: 9780596517328
Most programming frameworks of any complexity take time and effort to get to grips with - and Adobe’s Flex is no exception to the rule! Comprising a massive class library and various tools such as the compiler and debugger, Flex not only requires that the developer should be at ease with the ActionScript language but also with Flex graphics programming, MXML formatting and a variety of techniques and technologies to deal with events, styles, data-binding and so on.
Speaking from personal experience, I can tell you that the learning curve for a beginner is pretty steep. Other books such as Essential ActionScript 3.0 cover some of the topics you’ll need to master but may assume some prior knowledge of the subject. Flex 3 Training From The Source is a more complete guide for a beginner but is not the most approachable book as it concentrates on developing a single, monolithic application in over 670 pages. The Essential Guide To Flex 3 is a pretty good book for beginners though its 600 monochrome pages are not exactly inviting...
Leaning Flex 3, by comparison, is a pleasure to read. The book just looks so darn’ nice. The colourfully bizarre cover (are those coral polyps?) makes this look more like a photography book than a programming tutorial. And that sense of design is carried on right throughout the text. There are lots of full colour screenshots; the text, chapter headings and even the program code samples are all in colour. The pages are wider than normal so the book stays open easily on the desk. The layout is neat with broad margins into which various small notes are occasionally entered and there are lots of boxouts giving extra coverage of specific topics. Even the paper quality is nicer than you would normally expect in a programming book - in short, ‘Learning Flex 3’ is a book that just looks great.
But, of course, appearance isn’t everything. The important thing is that the quality of the content should match the quality of the looks. Well, in short: it does! This really is a first rate tutorial for newcomers to Flex. It covers all the basics and quite a few more advanced topics too. It introduces you to application design, event-handling, data-binding and validation, applying effects and styles and deploying to the Web or (using Adobe AIR) to the desktop.
The explanations are generally brief, clear and to the point. Often the author manages to explain more clearly in a few paragraphs topics to which other books devote many pages. It is written in the form of a progressive tutorial for Flex beginners and the chapters are intended to be read in order (though I’d say that if you are a bit more advanced you could easily skip some chapters and still benefit from the book).
So what are the downsides? Well, you have to bear in mind that this is very much an introductory text. It does not go into the nitty-gritty details of the ActionScript language (for that I’d suggest Essential ActionScript 3.0, it only covers a tiny part of the huge Flex class library and it barely scratches the surface e of AIR. Moreover, it assumes that your IDE will be Adobe Flex Builder and devotes some time to explaining how to use this to good effect. On the one hand, this is useful if (as is quite likely) you will be using Flex Builder - but if you are using some other ActionScript editor, then, of course, it will be irrelevant.
This is not a book for experienced Flex users, then. But, for newcomers to Flex, it would be top of my list of recommended texts.