Mini-review & Competition Flex Solutions: Essential Techniques

Source article

Flex is the quickest and most effective technology for the creation of Rich Internet Applications for the Web. Its extensive library of components and totally customizable framework, combined with the ubiquity of Flash Player, has guaranteed its success.

The ecosystem of products that rotate around Flex 2 and Flex 3 is really broad. Flex Builder, Flex SDK, and Charting Components are all essential parts of the technology that fit the different requirements of web development.

This enormous set of possibilities can easily lead to overload for developers like you. Theres just too much to learn and too many potential places to go when you hit a brick wall. Wouldnt it be nice to have a library of solutions to solve these problems quickly and easily?

Overview

This book provides just that, with more than 100 solutions to common problems in one handy volume.

Flex Solutions: Essential Techniques for Flex 2 and Flex 3 Developers faces problems and provides solutions that can be applied to any project, from the most simple to the most complex. The solutions range from customizing Flex components with ActionScript 3.0, using the data models and the ActionScript classes as Value objects, validating and formatting data, using RPC classes to access remote data, to optimizing data-exchange performance using AMF3.

Solutions are also provided for enhancing the security of Flex applications; and techniques are offered for optimizing the actual work environment by increasing the performance of Flex Builder, adding video content, and creating an AIR project to bring your web application onto the desktop.

If you want to learn about and start to develop RIAs in a short time, being immediately productive and mastering the Flex development techniques, Flex Solutions: Essential Techniques for Flex 2 and 3 Developers is the book you need.

In this book you'll learn

Tips on using Flex components
How to validate and format data
How to manage complex data
Filtering, sorting and using cursors on data with collection classes
How to consume Web Services using RPC components
How to display data using list-based controls
How to effectively compile and deploy Flex applications
How to customize the look and feel of your applications
How to make your applications more secure
How to become more efficient in using the Flex Builder IDE
Unique tricks such as calculating memory usage, making your Flex application into an active desktop, and customizing states
How to use the ColdFusion Extensions for Flex Builder
How to interface your Flex applications with server-side code written in PHP, Java, Rails, and ColdFusion
Working with Flex in enterprise enviroment using the Flex Data Services, Java Remote Object and AMFPHP

Summary of Contents

Chapter 1: Flex Basics
Chapter 2: Using Flex Components
Chapter 3: Working with Data Models and the Value Object
Chapter 4: Validating and Formatting Data
Chapter 5: Managing Complex Data
Chapter 6: Working with Remote Data Using the RPC Classes
Chapter 7: Displaying Data with List-based Components
Chapter 8: Compiling and Deploying Flex Applcations
Chapter 9: Designing and Programming the Look and Feel of Flex Applications
Chapter 10: Flex Security
Chapter 11: Advanced Flex Builder Techniques
Chapter 12: More Flex Framework Libraries and Utilities
Chapter 13: User Navigation in Flex Applications
Chapter 14: Migrating Flex Applications on the Desctop with Adobe AIR

Who is this book for?

This book is for any Flex 2 or Flex 3 developer who is comfortable with the basics and wants to take their knowledge further with quick fire solutions to common problems. Please note that some of the solutions contained in this book require the Flex Builder 3 Professional release of the software.

Conclusion

Flex Solutions: Essential Techniques for Flex 2 and 3 Developers by Marco Casario is a must have book. Why? Many simple, objective code snippets from which one can build many useful Flex applications. The simplicity of code examples can be also easily extended in real projects. The book is devided into problem oriented parts: Flex Basics, Using Components, Working with Data, Validating and Formatting Data, Managing Complex Data, Working with Remote Data, Compiling and Deploying Flex Applications, Designing and Programming the Look and Feel of Flex Applications, Flex Security and more. Each chapter consists of number of problems which are completely solved.

Marco, as it can be read in About the Author note, has been passionate about Informatics since he was a child. This fact is quickly realized while reading the Flex Solutions book. The code examples from the book can be applied into real-case Flex projects saving time on looking for solutions in other sources.

Although there were some slight modifications to the way you build applications in Flex 2 and Flex 3. The book covers a broad range of projects. We highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn more about Flex. If you look for a book with quick-fire solutions to common problems and best practice techniques, this book is for you. If you want to improve your Flex skills for Rich Internet Application development, this book is for you. And if you do not know Flex but want to learn what can be done with it and how, just guess: this book is also for you.

Competition

We've got a brand new mini-review and competition of Foundation Flex for Designers. The friendly people of friends of ED are giving away 5 books!

All you need to do, to enter the competition is, download the sample PDF and finish the following sentence:

"Object-oriented programming (OOP) has a convention for..."

Send your answer to this e-mail address, before Wednesday the 29th of April 2008. Don't forget to include your post address and phone number (required for international shipping) in the e-mail.