Tom Iancu said
Technically speaking the content of this book makes a lot of promises to those interested in advanced Flex development: It has an attractive - and well thought - title, and a lot of information that, at first glance, is of benefit for those who just stepped out of the first stages of mastering Flex 3.0 as RIA platform.
However, I would strongly advise to look carefully inside the book before buying and see if this suits you because most of the examples are built on non-standard libraries that use third-party, commercial, components. Thus, those interested in exploring the capabilities of Flex as RIA platform, their ability in reaching the promised goals and follow the development examples that the book is full of, will need to download a lot of source libraries with components and behaviours that mostly are not royalty-free. Moreover, sometimes configuring the (fat) libraries is a hassle that may even overcome the skills of the beginners.
Some namespaces provided in the examples even cannot be tracked on the web. One example is the Bubble Chart example in chapter 8 (2D Graphing Components: Introducing Charting) where the xmlns:degrafa has an invalid url (its is not degrafa.com but org) etc.
This is not a "copy-paste code and run example" kind of book ! Those who look for a steep learning curve in advanced Flex techniques will be dissapointed. IMO, the best approach in mastering a development framework is based on individual developments done by oneself instead of just copying and pasting code and, then, trying to debug in tons of code lines that might look very unfamiliar.
However, the examples are well explained and well designed and it might reach the promised objectives with additonal libraries I was talking about. It is broad, to the best definition of broadness. At it least it gives you some hints of what Flex 3.0 is capable of. ;)
So beware, look inside before you.
Seth Fuller said
Mr. Herrington covers some very interesting open source and commercial components for Flex, but many of the components could use their own chapter or even book (the data visualization components), but are glossed over in a few pages. I have done many searches for Flex components over the 20+ months I have been developing in Flex and some of the components described in this book are new to me. I would give this book five stars for finding worthwhile components, but the depth of coverage only rates three stars much of the time. I settled on four stars because of the number of components the author exposes the reader to though, and because Flex doesn't have nearly the depth of libraries that Java has and simply discovering some of the components is worth the price of admission.
J. Dusbabek said
If you are looking for a book that showcases a bunch of existing Flex components (that aren't a part of the standard Flex framework) then get this book and enjoy it. The book is well written and organized, and Herrington does an excellent job covering a lot of really cool components that will have people who visit your site asking, 'Wow, how'd he do that?'
If you'd like to give a more in depth answer to that question than, "I just tied this component into my app" OR if you're looking for a book that deals more in how to create cool, advanced Flex components (like I was); then you might feel a tinge of disappointment. Chapter 15 is dedicated to this topic, but it will feel like child's play to anyone who has extended UIComponent.
To anyone who has played around with the "Tour de Flex" application (http://flex.org/tour), many of the examples will seem familiar. In fact, if you enjoyed this book you'll probably enjoy exploring Tour de Flex. Though there is a lot of overlap, each also showcases components that are not in the other.
Creating components and integrating components are two very distinct (though related) topics. Before deciding to get this book, you should know that it is definitely weighted more towards integrating existing components.
Daniel D. Orlando said
This book is a resource more than anything for current Flex developers. I would not recommend this book to beginners, but STRONGLY recommend it if you have been coding in Flex and ActionScript 3 for a little while. Even if you are a beginner or intermediate, I would still consider getting this book and keeping on the shelf until you're ready for it. Prior to reading this book, there were a number of Flash-based AS3 components that I really wanted to use in Flex, but wasn't sure how to effectively port them over. This book shows you exactly WHERE to find the best of the best components out there, and then shows you HOW to use those components in Flex. Considering the lack of documentation for many of the valuable AS3 assets that can be found out there, this book is absolutely essential if you find yourself using components that are not included within the Flex framework.
Additionally, I like that this book shows you how to create your own Flex components in a loosely-coupled, object oriented design pattern that makes your components reusable. It also analyzes many of the pre-built example components in the book and shows you what specifically makes those components reusable, so you can implement the same techniques into your own code.
Bottom line - this book is worth far more than the price you pay for it if you are already a Flex developer.
Patrick Kellogg said
This book is a real find. The author has put together some great applications built with a wide variety of amazing components. In just a short time you learn how to deploy interactive mapping, or fake 3D with Google SketchUp, or use AMFPHP, or set up a 3D carousel for your images, etc. It's a really cool book with useful info in case you want to spice up your flex abilities a notch or more.
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