Midwest Book Review said
Any programmer working with Flex will find Creating Visual Experiences with Flex 3.0 an outstanding survey of how to create superior visuals. From initial designs to user-interface principles, chapters reveal different approaches and their pros and cons, survey design experiences and techniques, and demonstrate how to use Flex to create applications that are above competitors. Any advanced programmer's library needs this.
John Wolf said
The book talks about Flex, but limits the depth to a lot of rhetoric and somewhat weak examples. The problem I had with the book is I read Alaric Cole's book "Learning Flex 3" first, which is a much more readable and fun book that is full of indepth, full featured example projects and has a great many reference tips and places to visit on the Internet for help. Juan and Andy's book has some different details that Alaric's book, but I felt I was reading "about" Flex and not getting into the framework. It really helps to show a completed examples at the end of each chapter and not leave the clippets hanging. All the real examples were left to a set of exercises in the middle of the book that I didn't feel were very interesting, especially after reading Alaric's book. I would skip this book and buy "Learning Flex 3" by Alaric Cole.
John Blanco said
I just finished reading through this book last night. I didn't intend to read it so quickly after I finally got my hands on it, but I found I couldn't put it down. Perhaps I'm biased, because the two authors are co-workers of mine and, indeed, two designer/developers I much admire.
They've written something I've never seen written elsewhere. Where most Flex book talk about the bare language and basic screen construction, *this* book gives a broad treatment of styling and skinning. There were several handfuls of tips in there that have even helped me out in just the last week (minHeight="0", line thickness tricks, and OMG I never realized there was a reverse() method in effects, etc.)
The book reads very smoothly, and while at first I felt an absence of in-depth code, I think shuffling the exercises to the second half was a good idea. It let me read it during my commute without feeling like I had to skip material for then I had the focus to play with FB. Afterwards, I could focus on the exercises that I was particularly interested in and skip some that I was already familiar with.
I look forward to the sequel. :-)
Adrian Pomilio said
This review is from my blog entry at [...]
The book is broken into key sections: Introduction (actually worth reading), The Flex Framework, Beyond Flex (discusses the component kit), and Exercises. The reader can quickly begin to understand that the authors are experienced in actually doing this type of work, and they show it with very useful tips and notes that supplement the content. The content itself is written in an easy to digest format that builds upon itself and allows the reader to begin thinking about what they have read as well as what is coming next.
What I personally enjoyed about this book is how the authors did not interrupt the flow of the Framework section by inserting the exercise code. This approach gave the reader a feeling of being able to actually read the book without having to sit at a computer. This approach gave me ample time to delve into the topic and digest the contents without having to jump into an exercise. This approach should be a road map that other technical books follow.
The exercise section was well written and if you follow the exercises you will find success. The exercises were well thought out and help the reader understand the process/work flow to complete a task. They were not a lesson in regurgitation of code from book to screen.
I could not recommend any other book over `Creating Visual Experiences with Flex 3.0 for understanding the styling and visual approach to Flex. This is book is absolutely top dog in the category. If you are a Flex developer then this is one book you must have on your shelf.
Kudos to Juan Sanchez and Andy McIntosh for putting out an instant staple for Flex developers.
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