Flex Solutions: Essential Techniques for Flex 2 and 3 Developers...

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 904 pages
• Published by: friends of ED November 26, 2007
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 1590598768
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-1590598764
• Book Dimensions: 8.9 x 7.5 x 2 inches
• Weighs: 16 pounds

Book Description


Flex is the quickest and most effective technology for the creation of Rich Internet Applications for the Web. Its extensive library of components and totally customizable framework, combined with the ubiquity of Flash Player, has guaranteed its success.

The ecosystem of products that rotate around Flex 2 and Flex 3 is really broad. Flex Builder, Flex SDK, and Charting Components are all essential parts of the technology that fit the different requirements of web development.

This enormous set of possibilities can easily lead to overload for developers like you. Theres just too much to learn and too many potential places to go when you hit a brick wall. Wouldnt it be nice to have a library of solutions to solve these problems quickly and easily?

This book provides just that, with more than 100 solutions to common problems in one handy volume.

Flex Solutions: Essential Techniques for Flex 2 and Flex 3 Developers faces problems and provides solutions that can be applied to any project, from the most simple to the most complex. The solutions range from customizing Flex components with ActionScript 3.0, using the data models and the ActionScript classes as Value objects, validating and formatting data, using RPC classes to access remote data, to optimizing data-exchange performance using AMF3.

Solutions are also provided for enhancing the security of Flex applications; and techniques are offered for optimizing the actual work environment by increasing the performance of Flex Builder, adding video content, and creating an AIR project to bring your web application onto the desktop.

If you want to learn about and start to develop RIAs in a short time, being immediately productive and mastering the Flex development techniques, Flex Solutions: Essential Techniques for Flex 2 and 3 Developers is the book you need.

In this book you'll:

• Discover real-world solutions for everyday Flex development, saving hours of development time.
• Learn how to customize and extend the Flex Components Model and design and program the look and feel of your Flex applications.
• Learn best practices and tips from a Flex expert for structuring the architecture of Flex applications.
• Use the Flex Remote Procedure Classes to connect to remote data with HTTPServices and the Java Platform, PHP, ColdFusion, WebServices, and RemoteObject.
• Use the new Flex 3 features, such as the AdvancedDataGrid component and the Charting Enhancements feature.
• Port your Rich Internet Applications onto the desktop with Adobe AIR.

What youll learn

• Tips on using Flex components
• How to validate and format data
• How to manage complex data
• Filtering, sorting and using cursors on data with collection classes
• How to consume Web Services using RPC components
• How to display data using list-based controls
• How to effectively compile and deploy Flex applications
• How to customize the look and feel of your applications
• How to make your applications more secure
• How to become more efficient in using the Flex Builder IDE
• Unique tricks such as calculating memory usage, making your Flex application into an active desktop, and customizing states
• How to use the ColdFusion Extensions for Flex Builder
• How to interface your Flex applications with server-side code written in PHP, Java, Rails, and ColdFusion
• Working with Flex in enterprise enviroment using the Flex Data Services, Java Remote Object and AMFPHP

Who is this book for?

This book is for any Flex 2 or Flex 3 developer who is comfortable with the basics and wants to take their knowledge further with quick fire solutions to common problems.

About The Author
Marco is one of the most dynamic developers and consultants in the Adobe world.

He has been passionate about informatics since he was little more than a child and used to program games in Basic for Commodore 64 before dedicating himself, while still very young, to innovative projects for the web using Flash and Director (as far back as versions 3 and 5.)

In 2001, he began to collaborate with Macromedia Italia. Since that year he has produced and headed a long series of presentations, conferences and articles, which you can find listed in detail in his blog entitled "hands on Adobe world" (casario.blogs.com,) which is currently receiving several thousands of unique visitors every day.

In 2005, Marco founded Comtaste (www.comtaste.com,) a company dedicated to exploring new frontiers in Rich Internet Applications and the convergence between the web and the world of mobile devices&emdash;MobyMobile (www.mobymobile.com) and YouThru (www.youthru.com) are representative of their recent work.

Another example of Marco's achievements is that he is founder of the biggest worldwide Flash Lite User Group (groups.yahoo.com/group/FlashLite/) and of www.augitaly.com, a reference point for the Italian community of Adobe users, in which he carries out the role of Channel Manager for the section dedicated to Flex (www.augitaly.com/flexgala.)

Marco is currently busy working on the development (in Flex) of a very ambitious project concerning bank counters at European level, and in various consulting and Flex and Flash Media Server training activities for the realisation of Rich Internet Applications on behalf of buyers of the calibre of Capgemini, Engineering, IBM partners, and Adobe Systems software Ireland Ltd


Reader Reviews
We've been using Flex on a fairly significant project for about 8 months. I have gotten enough experience that there are only a few chapters that I don't at least have some exposure to. But with that said each 'Solution' has a section at the end called 'Expert tips' which gives me deeper instruction into even the more basic Flex techniques. Some of these things I know how to do, but the expert tips show me a better way or give more insight. It has more advanced coverage on some things like security, compiling and optimizing your IDE than I have seen in any of the Flex books I have looked at yet. It also peeks into some of the things coming in Flex 3 like the Advanced Data Grid. All in all I wouldn't say it is a primer for a complete beginner. For that I would suggest the "Training from the source..." book(s) but its the closest thing I have seen to a Flex cookbook yet and the recipes are well covered. It's also not likely to have alot of information for someone with a couple years experience either. But if you have gotten your feet wet with the basics and are starting to look for a good cookbook, I'd say this might be the book for you. Comment | | (Report this)