Good Flex Books?

[danhodkinson]

looking at delving into Flex 3 whilst i have some time on my hands over the next couple of weeks, anybody got any good recommendations for books, its tricky on amazon cuz 5 ppl will give it 4 stars and then 1 will slate it, just wondering what you people who use flex would recommend - a beginners and a more of an intermediate book.
Thanks
Dan

[kortex]

Have a list of book recommendations at: http://visualflowdesigns.com/book-recommendations/

These are books I actually own.

[Spirit Wolf]

Same for me.

I just got a new job and they want me to learn Flex 3. Problem for me is, that it has been quite a few years ago that I had been programming on a serieus level. I'm somewhat familiar with AS2.0 and now also with AS3.0. But not so much that I'm fluent in programming something with ease. I use the basic stuff for medium interaction in flash websites.

So now I need some good books. "For dummies" book is way too low level for me. The "Bible" books contain too much information and text. So those are only good as reference books.
I need some books that immediatly goes into action with some decent examples, that explains enough but not too much. And explains it in a way that is clear. Not like those helpfiles. They explain what kind of object or class it is and give a sample code, yet still leave you in the dark because they actually aren't saying anything in the description.

I'm an intermediate user of flash (mostly graphic-wise) and although I know some programming, performance and efficiancy wise I still need some help.
The company I'm going to work for will pay for the books, but they need to know which ones I need. And I don't want them to spend money on books that they are nothing with. I don't want to make a bad impression.

So if anyone could help, Thnx. Oh yeah, the books need to be available in Belgium. English books are fine, Dutch books would be great.

Cheers

[kortex]

Just picked up the Flex 3 Cookbook. Nice format presents actual solutions to common problems.

[vjn_23]

FriendsofED The Essential Guide to Flex 3
Flex 3 Cookbook
Flex 2 And 3 Developers
FriendsofED AdvancED Flex Application Development Building

these very usefull to i learnt flex so study well....

if any suggestions please send to me in my mail id

thank you
vjn

[aktell]

FriendsofED The Essential Guide to Flex 3
Flex 3 Cookbook
Flex 2 And 3 Developers
FriendsofED AdvancED Flex Application Development Building

these very usefull to i learnt flex so study well....

if any suggestions please send to me in my mail id

thank you
vjn

Hi there,

If you read one you have read them all !!!

I have NOT found within the last two years ONE real FLEX book like they where writing books for other languages e.g. VB 6 – .NET - C# etc. ....

They are all the same with FLEX "Going through the absolute basics over and over again - Explaining the Combo Box - - Explaining the Combo Box - - Explaining the Combo Box - Explaining the Video player - ………… - Explaining the Image Galleries which need ages to download and are totally useless on the web - Ah and before I forget it ‘- Explaining the Combo Box” …… and so on.

Now Friends of ED – Well, they are the worsted of all !!! The books mentioned are absolutely rubbish I got them all as hard copy or PDF and what you can use in very minimal say the least.

By the way one book mentioned above is not even mentioned on Friends of ED “FriendsofED AdvancED Flex Application Development Building” I was looking for it in many ways and nothing at all.

A reasonable book to get would be maybe this one and that should be enough to cover all the others!
‘Flex Solutions: Essential Techniques for Flex 2 and 3 Developers”

Just noticed that that is actually published by Friends of ED – Well did they do not well.

Regards aktell

[blanius]

I too have not seen the kind of example laden books I'm accustomed to with other languages/programs. I've usually gotten more from working through an example program that uses real world data and then translating that to the kinds of things I need. I'm not a hard core programmer so examples are how I tend to understand things. Not from code references. (which are Great when I need to look up the proper use of language component)

[sofa]

To be honest, I'd say that the Lynda "Beyond the Basics" training was probably better than the books I've read.

Adobe's book, Flex Training from the Source helped a bit, but to be honest, not even the Flex 3 Cookbook offered enough examples of PureMVC and Cairngorm based examples to be considered a "must buy".

[kortex]

OK so it seems there is a general dissatisfaction with the books on Flex. I see one post that indicates perhaps more coverage of Flex frameworks. What else would you like to see covered in books on Flex?

[gerbick]

Less basics, more real-world. More Cairngorm/PureMVC patterns... and why. AS3 Patterns are largely overlooked.

[kortex]

Interesting thoughts gerbick. I know of two books that cover Cairngorm. I know there are tons of online tutorials. What topics around them are you not seeing covered (I do agree most of them are inadequate, but curious as to whether there are specific things)?

As for AS3 patterns I know there are two books completely devoted to the topic, what's lacking there?

[aktell]

OK so it seems there is a general dissatisfaction with the books on Flex. I see one post that indicates perhaps more coverage of Flex frameworks. What else would you like to see covered in books on Flex?

Hi there,

Unfortunately I did not visit the last couple of days the forum. It’s unusual enough that there is actually a thread moving.
Anyway, I for myself have been struggling over the last two years to get as much as possible to work with! My personal opinion is that any of these books and as well as videos are over and over again threshing the basics to death and than in the end there are not enough pages left to actually write something more real-world orientated. I do have most books and videos and there is not much to report they just don’t get going.

My views of things are and what I would like to have seen is:
Flex books explaining in the first place all the fancy tools which come especially in FLEX 3 and than FLEX itself e.g. modules as single and multiple projects, interaction and so on in more detail much more detail. Instead we got the ‘Best Practise’ approach which seems to be so important to ADOBE and to book writers.

A very good example for usefulness are Image galleries which are coded with MySQL, Php, AS3 name it and 99.6% of them do not pull a skin of a rice pudding been sooooooo slow it’s not even funny anymore. These days you go on the net and there is still this waiting, ……. waiting, ….. waiting as much with FLEX as Flash.
I believe that ADOBE is not putting enough into FLEX but comes out with all these other apps. And that is also indicated in all books and videos.
I think that FLEX itself has so much more to offer !!! but you just have to spend time to find it out yourself through trial and error as books and videos are NOT catering for the real-world FLEXER.


Note:
17 Nov 08 new release from Friends of ED
‘Flex 3 Component Solutions:
Build Amazing Interfaces with Flex Components ‘ to be the best yet or at least since sliced bread. Hardly can wait!

Regards aktell

[gerbick]

Interesting thoughts gerbick. I know of two books that cover Cairngorm. I know there are tons of online tutorials. What topics around them are you not seeing covered (I do agree most of them are inadequate, but curious as to whether there are specific things)?

As for AS3 patterns I know there are two books completely devoted to the topic, what's lacking there?

You will find bits and pieces of good advice and practices here and there. I picked up PureMVC quicker than Cairngorm. And it's simply because the examples in PureMVC were closer to real life uses than Cairngorm's esoteric examples I've seen in the books so far. And it's not the best framework imho.

The real lack of real-life examples that really equate to a start/middle/end of a project I'd love to see or might have ever been asked is nowhere found. Seriously, there are no good tutorials that explain some of the why's - I tend to have to explain the code to my designer friends.

I'm basically in the middle... a designer and a developer. Some patterns don't make a lick of sense to me. Some do. I have a background in C++. But I also have done .NET as well. But when it really comes down to it... I'd rather just say that the examples in most books suck. The tutorials online tend to be closer to what I need.

The AS3 patterns books... seriously. I learned more from the Essential ActionScript 3.0 and Flex Cookbook than from the pattern books. And it's mostly because repetition instead of explaining it well just once... that's a difference to me that stuck with me.

And finally, the issues with the examples (return to this) is that they really, really suck. I have an ongoing issue with a mx:Canvas render issue like no other. It's the combination of web services slamming data in, a resize event that's hard as heck to trace - PureMVC can get in the way sometimes - and some other issues. I finally solved part of it by taking the canvas apart and doing it piece by piece. And nothing... and I mean nothing online or in a book helped me.

It's not anger you hear. It's frustration. And the books still don't give real enough examples.

Don't get me started on Papervision3D. Awesome, but I swear it goes from ultra-beginner to mad advanced in one tutorial.

[kortex]

Thanks guys. I have provided a link to this thread to one of my colleagues in the publishing industry. Hope fully they are actually reading it (if not I can pass it on to them).

I agree with basically everything you are saying. So the examples suck. So what do you think would be a good example to use if you had you pick?

That's what tripped me up when I started looking into these. All the project I had I looked at and said this would be so much easier to do using the regular Flex framework (relatively small ones). I finally came up with the idea of creating a Flex interface for WordPress since that seemed large enough to make using one of the frameworks realistic.

Any suggestions?

[sofa]

If you have a Flex front end for Wordpress, I'll give it a spin

Ok... for instance. I hate browser manager's templates, so I tend to use SWFAddress. In that regard, I had pieces of content that would pull from an XMLArray where the branch and leaf were populated and values were sent to the SWFAddress proxy. Mind you, this was a pain because SWFAddress wants to really be involved in everything. It took me a month to figure out the part(s) that were not needed and what I did need - not one good tutorial on the internet.

Another tutorial I've not found... how to avoid SWFLoader from loading up a *.swf file, destroy that instance, and then have it fail on the reload of that same *.swf file. There has to be a way around that.

I have plenty of other requests - things I'd love to see - and the start/middle/end type of tutorial is what is really missing. No loading XML values... I know how to do that. How about loading an XMLArray, sorting and populating into a datagrid and then assigning via web service and/or file system object an image/icon alongside the XML driven information, destination and other data.

There are a ton of things I'm sure people want to see. Mind you, Flex Cookbook has some rather decent ones. But I still find myself answering more to clients that want something that sounds simple, but the way I've structured my states, transitions, the sequences/parallels and if I've decided to go PureMVC, therefore my proxies and AppFacade might need extending and sometimes, despite knowing my own code, the request isn't always so easy.

And it infuriates me since sometimes the client pulls me out of a pattern.

There are some other examples that I'd love to see - most center around extending what's there as well as the all important lesson... how to re-use code for later projects.

I have plenty more... this is a sore spot for me.

[aktell]

Thanks guys. I have provided a link to this thread to one of my colleagues in the publishing industry. Hope fully they are actually reading it (if not I can pass it on to them).

Well, here I found a perfect example of getting stuck and where do we go from here as there is NO documentation! Or is there.
http://www.flexdeveloper.eu/forums/f...solute-paths)/

I agree with basically everything you are saying. So the examples suck. So what do you think would be a good example to use if you had you pick?

This is very difficult to say as everybody has its own subset of ideas and everybody is trying to follow these which make it very hard to generalize!
For my part and personal development ideas I have written over time an FLEX web application template which does everything I ever dreamed off and more in web development and is solly build/based on a single modular project simply because I was not able to adapted a multiple modular project to the requirements or for that matter to get it to work at all. Again here as with single modular projects NO or hardly any documentation and examples out of five I ever found on the web ONE only was usable and was written strictly and ‘Best Practice’ off course the ADOBE way. I have taken around 60% of code out of it and modified the structure as it was in testing it very sluggish and very slow to use as a web app even with all the tweaks e.g.RSL etc. Furthermore for the use of the app with modules I had to dream up everything else what was needed. I’m to this day still struggling a little with interaction between app and modules and modules and app etc. So trying to keep this short I believe that there could be a book written on only single and multiple module projects and its uses alone.

That's what tripped me up when I started looking into these. All the project I had I looked at and said this would be so much easier to do using the regular Flex framework (relatively small ones). I finally came up with the idea of creating a Flex interface for WordPress since that seemed large enough to make using one of the frameworks realistic.

Any suggestions?

Sorry, but I’m not getting the meaning of this one.

regards aktell

[kortex]

As for the last part first, I was simply saying that when I was looking for a project to learn from (something to create using the framework), most of the things I came up with were too simple to warrant using a framework (i.e., I would be forcing the project into the framework rather than using the framework to make the process of creating the project simpler). As far as the Blog app goes, that was the first idea I came up with that seemed large enough and complex enough to use a framework without it being contrived.

And as you point out, it does become diffifcult to generalize, which I think is part of the reason you get the examples that you do in the books. People are trying to be as generic as possible, but what happens when you go generic is that it then by definition does to address any specific issue.

So I am really just asking what examples would you use if you had to pick one, since that is the problem faced by the people creating these tutorials and books.

Well, here I found a perfect example of getting stuck and where do we go from here as there is NO documentation! Or is there.
http://www.flexdeveloper.eu/forums/f...solute-paths)/



This is very difficult to say as everybody has its own subset of ideas and everybody is trying to follow these which make it very hard to generalize!
For my part and personal development ideas I have written over time an FLEX web application template which does everything I ever dreamed off and more in web development and is solly build/based on a single modular project simply because I was not able to adapted a multiple modular project to the requirements or for that matter to get it to work at all. Again here as with single modular projects NO or hardly any documentation and examples out of five I ever found on the web ONE only was usable and was written strictly and ‘Best Practice’ off course the ADOBE way. I have taken around 60% of code out of it and modified the structure as it was in testing it very sluggish and very slow to use as a web app even with all the tweaks e.g.RSL etc. Furthermore for the use of the app with modules I had to dream up everything else what was needed. I’m to this day still struggling a little with interaction between app and modules and modules and app etc. So trying to keep this short I believe that there could be a book written on only single and multiple module projects and its uses alone.




Sorry, but I’m not getting the meaning of this one.

regards aktell

[Upchurch]

I picked up O'Reilly's Programming Flex 2 by Chafic Kazoun and Joey Lott and found it very helpful for those aspects I don't use very often. I'm sure there is probably an updated version out there.

[kortex]

I picked up O'Reilly's Programming Flex 2 by Chafic Kazoun and Joey Lott and found it very helpful for those aspects I don't use very often. I'm sure there is probably an updated version out there.

http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Fl.../dp/0596516215