Web Hosting – Web Development

 Get yourself up to speed quickly with Adobe Soundbooth CS3. The Classroom in a book series does what it intends to, give you enough info to hit the ground running and at least be able to communicate confidently on the subject after reading and doing the lesson.Each chapter gives you hands on projects that get you involved.If you need to create and publish sound for the web, Soundbooth makes it easy and The Classroom in a book series will get you going. Publisher: Adobe Press; Pap/Cdr edition (August 9, 2007) Language: English

ISBN-10: 0321499778

http://www.peachpit.com/store/product.aspx?isbn=0321499778

This is a handy guide to have around when you’re not a DBA but find yourself dealing with Databases from the different vendors. Each vendor has there own little differences of SQL syntax that make them special. I don’t want to be a DBA I just want a little data and the guide will help you quickly deal with the quirks and special features of the major Databases.

This is not a how to book, if you want that get the Head First SQL book. If you need to know the difference on correct syntax for using Regular Expressions with MS SQL and mySQL, this guide is for you.

Publisher: O'Reilly Media, Inc.; 2 edition (April 17, 2006) Language: English ISBN-10: 0596526881

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.