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Flex Builder 2 is an awesome product!

I was skeptical at first, being new to the built on Eclipse IDE, though the interface proved to be very intuitive to the new user. If you're a Dreamweaver user, never fear, this IDE is a synch once you use it a bit.

There are two views, Source View and Design View:

Source View – If you're a coder, you'll feel right at home here. It has color coding, line numbering, line collapsing, tag hinting, easy tabbing features to separate your code and the list goes on. One of the features that amazes me is tag hinting for your custom classes. If you were to create a custom class (or component which would be a class) then by declaring it with a namespace or importing it, Flex Builder will automatically add it to the tag hinting along with all of the built-in classes, methods, properties and events.

Design View – Without a doubt, Design View simplifies building your interface. Being able to drag and drop built in components into your app, give you the ability to build your interface quickly while Flex Builder handles the code. Flex Builder manages layout nicely unlike the browser specific markup of the past. You can specify x and y coordinates, expand and contract using percentages and have components float based on constraints.

Debugging mode is an extremely powerful feature of Flex Builder. You can set breakpoints, see all variables and expressions. It also has the ability to step through the breakpoints.

There are many more features I am not going to mention in this review. I will say that if you plan on developing RIA’s, Flex is the way to go with increased productivity of Flex Builder 2.

Also, Flex Builder 2 is available FREE to educational institutions and students!

Andrew Maurer

review by John E. Bowen

Authors Kazoun and Lott present a quite credible case for rich, solid Internet applications with sophisticated interfaces for the end user. They do so by introducing, explaining and giving many examples illustrating the Flex approach and making use of the various tools of the Flex framework. A reader coming to Flex (and Adobe) for the first time could be forgiven for thinking that this is a new programming language called Flex 2. There is no such language. Still, a slightly misleading title is a small thing, easily remedied in the first two chapters; paraphrasing, Flex uses ActionScript, so does Flash, but Flex is, or can be, a whole new way of thinking about application development.

This book is a coder's book. It assumes some familiarity with object oriented programming, hopefully via ActionScript from previous Flash experience. There is a chapter devoted to the MXML language and how Flex Builder can help generate interfaces through MXML; however, the authors are clear to point out that very few applications consist solely of MXML and no ActionScript.

There is a brief mention that Flex 2 requires Flash Player 9. Otherwise, one can't use Flex 2; obviously something of importance to teams deciding where and how to actually deploy their application once it's finished. Mostly, though, the book is forward-looking: if you build it with Flex 2, ActionScript 3 and Flash Player 9, they will come.

There is a chapter on ActionScript 3. It includes an honest assessment that if this is the reader's first encounter with ActionScript, an additional book would help. Kazoun and Lott are not shorting the importance of that programming language, but merely saying there are many more pieces involved in the whole process. In this sense, while fairly thorough for each piece, Programming Flex 2 can be considered an overview. A little attention to the concept of frameworks, user interface screen layout and UI components goes a long way toward helping the developer make sense of the whole alphabet soup of acronyms and buzzwords. Once that is addressed, the next roughly two thirds of the book deal with advanced topics.

What are advanced topics? A short answer would be the kinds of features one does not normally see in Web pages: easy access to audio, video, other media; effects such as gradients, fades, transitions; dynamic changes to CSS; live update of data; validation of client-side data, and more. Many of these are the kinds of things users have come to expect (demand?) from Flash-enabled sites; others help more with the back end, and with the stability and maintenance of the application.

All in all, this effort is informative introduction and guide to a quite possibly daunting set of technologies. Recommended.

Programming Flex 2: The comprehensive guide to creating rich media applications with Adobe Flex

(Programming) [ILLUSTRATED] (Paperback)

by Chafic Kazoun (Author), Joey Lott (Author)

• Paperback: 502 pages

• Publisher: Adobe Dev Library (April 16, 2007)

• Language: English

• ISBN-10: 059652689X

 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/9780596526894/index.html

The book "Action Script 3.0 Cookbook" is laid out in an easy to use, logical manner. The chapters are an outline of the large divisions of Action Script 3.0.

AS3 Design Patterns is a must read and keep for reference!

ActionScript 3.0 Design Patterns starts off going over the basics of OOP and comparing AS3 to AS2.  The rest of the book is Design Patterns to use in various coding situations. Many books use conceptual ideas to teach and are filled with ambiguity therefore leaving much to be desired, but not this one!

ActionScript 3.0 Design Patterns is a must have for the novice all the way to the advanced developer, although not designed for the beginning Actionscripter. To clarify, the book does require, at minimum, basic knowledge of OOP which includes, but is not limited to packages, variables, classes and inheritance. I purchased Essential ActionScript 3.0 by Colin Moock which is a great starting point to learn AS3 . I definitely recommend reading a beginners AS3 book before starting this one if completely new to OOP. Make sure to pickup ActionScript 3.0 Design Patterns as well.

Andrew Maurer

http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/9780596528461/

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