Product Description

• Understand MXML containers
• Create transitions
• Create data-driven applications with XML
• Interface Flex with ColdFusion
• Understand the power of states

Flex 2 represents something of a revolution in web applications. It is the next evolutionary step of Flash, which has grown from a web animation tool to a powerful enterprise web design and development tool. with nearly 98% of all web browsers and cellular phones running the Flash player needed to use Flash and Flex applications, knowledge of Flex is indispensable for any serious web designer and developer. This book will show you how to create powerful, rich Internet applications using Flex 2 and ActionScript 3.0. After learning how to install and becoming familiar with the basics of the Flex Builder 2 software, you will explore in depth how ActionScript 3.0 interacts with Flexs powerful XML-like design language: MXML. the text will take you through all the powerful features of Flex using a series of strictly practical exercises. You will:

• Examine the power of designing layouts using Flex's MXML containers.
• Discover many of the new features of ActionScript 3.0.
• Work your way through a professional case study, building up a complete Flex application.
• Connect Flex to Adobe's powerful ColdFusion application server, and start to work with Flex applications powered by dynamic server-side code.
• Learn how states can smoothly transition your application interfaces between different data displays.

Put quite simply, this book is all youll need to master Flex 2 and ActionScript 3.0 application development. Welcome to the revolution! Summary of contents:

• Chapter 1: Introducing RIAs and Installing Flex Builder 2
• Chapter 2: Introducing Flex and Flex Builder 2
• Chapter 3: Introducing ActionScript 3.0
• Chapter 4: Containers and Components
• Chapter 5: Navigation Containers
• Chapter 6: Flex and XML
• Chapter 7: States
• Chapter 8: Case Study: Part 1
• Chapter 9: The Repeater Component
• Chapter 10: Case Study: Part 2
• Chapter 11: Drag and Drop
• Chapter 12: Flex and ColdFusion
• Chapter 13: Charting
• Chapter 14: Printing
• Chapter 15: Unfinished Symphony

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #609876 in Books
• Published on: 2007-02-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 520 pages

About the Author
Charles is one of the most noted author, consultant, and trainers in the industry today. His books about Dreamweaver and Fireworks have received critical acclaim and used worldwide as teaching tools. In addition to his work in the IT industry, Charles is also a noted concert pianist, organist, and guitarist appearing in major concert centers world-wide. He began his musical studies at age 4 and went on to study with famed pianist Vladimir Horowitz. At age 14 he made his debut with Leonard Bernstein and went on to study at the famed Juilliard School. Eventually he went to Paris to study with the 20th century legend, Igor Stravinsky. While working with Stravinsky, Charles developed a close friendship with one of the most powerful artistic forces of the 20th century: Pablo Picasso. What he learned about creativity from Picasso he uses today in his writings and training work. Charles is a certified Macromedia/Adobe trainer who is in heavy demand worldwide. He frequently speaks at major conferences such as MAX and NAB. You can see his blog at blog.charlesebrown.net and his website can be found at www.charlesebrown.net.

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Customer Reviews

Thorough and Procedural
Flex 2 with Actionscript 3.0 by Charles E. Brown

This book, written to a relatively low level, and with an intent to be comprehensive, is relentlessly procedural. The first hundred pages or so take you through installing Flex Builder and then step by step through some really simple mxXML based projects. There are truly some weird little "gotchas" that I doubt I would have noticed any other way but reading this book. In short, reading this book I know will save me countless hours of time, simply for revealing some drudge details that could have really messed me up, like the different kinds of quotation marks used when passing an argument to an Actionscript function from within an MX-based object. Plus I know what Flex is, and what it is not.

You can expect to know about layout containers, too. Consider the following:

"As you can see, there are 16 layout containers. Throughout this book we will cover nearly all of them. However, for now you'll just be concerned with the seven most commonly used ones, described in the following list: Hbox, Vbox, Canvas, Panel, Tile, ApplicationControlBar, and ControlBar" (This is not an exact quote; Brown gives the distinguishing characteristics for each, and follows with a procedural exploration of how to use them, complete with screen shots).

The author has a flex website, charlesebrown dot net . Check it out!

If you don't know anything about Flex and AS3 and you want to know it all, this isn't a bad place to start. If you like working step by step along with software, its perfect.You surely won't begrudge the author his diligent and thorough approach and basically good attitude even though the book is not too exciting. If you already know Flex, or Actionscript, this book will probably be too basic for you.

Good basics book for Flex and ActionScript beginners
First of all this book is an easy read. Mr. Brown does a good job of taking small steps and explaining everything clearly as he goes. At each stage, he does a good job of building on what he's already covered.

The book is clearly aimed at those with very little experience in Flex or ActionScript. If you've already been programming for a while with Flex (even an earlier version of Flex) I think you'll find the pace too slow.

I can recommend the book to those starting out with Flex or ActionScript.

For the rest of us, there are more advanced books that will fill out our Flex and Actionscript knowledge, such as a AdvancED ActionScript Components by Antonio De Donatis.

Flex demystified!
Flex 2 with ActionScript 3.0
By Charles E. Brown
Publisher: Friends of Ed
Copyright 2007
IBSN:-13 (pbk) 978-1-59059-733-0

Reviewer: Linda Weller


The author explains Flex in a very interesting instructive way. It explains the meaning of Flex and ActionScript 3.0 in the new Flash landscape.

One of the great things about this book is that the author looks at all aspects of Flex from high/low levels and from a designer/developer perspective. It was great to discover if you can use XML or Dreamweaver you can use Flex. Flex will bring the web to a new level. Flex was introduced in 2004 as a solution to having to learn about Flash's scenes and timelines. Flex is a more traditional programming environment. It combines .mxml and ActionScript 3.0. The author urges everyone to "stop thinking page to page website and think smooth flowing desktop applications. Flex Builder 2 is built around Eclipse. The GUI uses XHTML and OOP. You use ActionScript 3.0 to extend the power of .mxml. When you add ActionScript 3.0 to Flex you can add dynamic interaction between your components. When you compile an application to a .swf it transforms the .mxml code to ActionScript 3.0 The goal of Flex is rapid development. You use ActionScript to connect the components together and .mxml to tell Flex how to assemble pre-build containers.

When beginning to do work in Flex he suggests that you start in design view and then move to code view to fine tune things. One of the benefits of using Flex over HTML is that it has adjustability to many sizes. You could take the same application you used on the web and scale it down for mobile for example. The downside of .mxml is that it can't loop or make decisions so you need ActionScript 3.0 for this. In AS 3.0 we now have Sprite which is essentially a Movie Clip without a timeline. Charles Brown explains that between the CDATA tags is where your ActionScript code is placed.

To create a new .mxml document you must first create a new Flex project. The main purpose of Flex is to present data and therefore it is called a presentation server. Flex applications are build by creating containers within containers the application tags being the outermost containers.

He covers the Navigation Containers: View Stack, Accordian and Tab Navigator. These are the ingredients that give Flex its rapid development reputation. New class files for the easy access of XML have been implemented called E4X. The section about displaying data with a data grid presents another rapid development feature. He discusses states which give you the timeline functionality without the timeline. He makes the distinction that Flex is not an animation program so, it will not be replacing Flash. He wraps up the last part of the book by launching into a two part case study of building a shopping cart utilizing all the concepts he has introduced earlier in the book.