This is a nice book to introduce someone to XML; however, it spends quite a bit of time on Microsoft Office integration with XML and Flash. This is a useful topic, but I would prefer the book be more aptly titled "Office XML and Flash". Not a bad buy for the money, but if you are looking for a hardcore XML and Flash book, this is probably not the one for you. If you have many clients that you believe would benefit from integrating their Microsoft Office 2003 suite with an online flash front-end, this would definitely be worth your time and money. I would estimate that at least 70% of this book is purely about using Office with XML. Again, not a bad buy, but keep the focus on Office in mind.

After playing around with Flash for the last three years, I finally began to get serious about scripting about four months ago. Like a lot of folks, I seem to lack that little something that separates a true scripting genius from a scripting hack. Although there's always hope, my mind simply does not work that way.

Unlike many code books, this one made sense to me immediately. XML is starting to look like something I can actually begin to incorporate into my projects, thanks to Sas's easy-to-read style and clear explanations and samples. It may not be the first choice for XML and Actionscript gurus, but it should be a good investment for folks who want a good intro into the subject matter. Finally, Sas's ample coverage of generating XML with MS Office seems quite appropriate, since it is the dominant office suite (for good or ill).

As I wrote about a month ago, I got the new XML book from Friends of Ed titled Foundation XML for Flash by Sas Jacobs. Now, I've been doing a bunch of XML work over the past couple of months and have gotten accustomed to using XML in my projects to do just about any kind of data updating, so I'm pretty well versed in writing loops around XML to retrieve data and to set up my buttons and all that. That being said, on to the book review:

The book definitely had its up accompanied by a couple of downs. Firstly, the thing I loved about the book is that if you have no prior experience with XML, this is the perfect book for you. It walks you through almost everything you need to know about XML and teaches you how to set up some pretty simple XML usage examples to get the grasp of all the possible properties of the XML object in Flash. As you progress through the book, you get into using the XML components, which is something I haven't even dabbled in personally for the simple fact that I prefer to have total control over my XML and I like to be able to edit/see the code to make sure I understand it (and since I wrote it I surely understand it...). The components definitely have their UPS, however, and its good for doing things like using web services or more advanced data binding.

Another thing I liked about the book was the fact that in the beginner chapters, where most beginners will learn the ropes of XML in Flash, Sas writes code that shows how to use pretty much all of the properties of the XML object, even though it's not the most efficient way of writing the code. She goes on to explain in the chapter summary how to more effectively write the code, but seeing the usage of some of those properties/methods is definitely helpful in case you're ever in a situation where you may benefit from them. The files the book uses are not available on a CD included, which is good because you don't have the hard CD cover sleeve in the back of the book making it impossible to keep it open and they're easily accessible from the Friends of Ed site (linked above) in the downloads section for the book.

Alternately, the cons of the book: For an XML for Flash book, there is way too much talk about Microsoft Office. I understand that sometimes this may come in very handy when your client gives you an Excel or Word file and you're going to have to convert it into XML, but personally I don't think that topic applies to too many people working with XML outside of a huge corporate environment. I know I've never been passed off any office documents and had to convert them into XML, but I do understand the need may arise sometime so it's not entirely bad to put this in, but I don't think it's necessary to write four chapters on it as opposed to breezing over it.

The database scripting language used in the book is ASP which I found kind of weird considering XML, like PHP, is a free technology and it would only make sense to use PHP for the database scripting examples. In Sas' defense, Friends of Ed has a book titled Foundation PHP 5 for Flash (which I also own and it is a very good book), so maybe covering some parts of it in ASP is not such a bad thing, just a personal preference for me to use PHP instead.

As I was forewarned by Pete Aylward, the Product Manager at Friends of Ed, that some screenshots in the book were printed at low quality. As promised, however, the good quality images were put online in case you need to refer to them at the Friends of Ed site.

Overall, as mentioned earlier, I think the book is great for people looking to dive right into XML who haven't had any previous knowledge of the technology. There are even mentions of things like XSLT and CSS along with other closely related technologies to make you aware of everything you need to know about XML. Get it, let it sink in, and enjoy the wonderful world that is XML and Flash. I promise you, you'll never want to do manual updating again.

On a related note, check out my XML image gallery source code to get some more insight into XML and Flash. It is fully commented to help understand what is going on in the file.

I found this book of no use whatsoever, a complete waste of money. As another reviewer noted, the screen shots are terrible. They really are. You're supposed to be able to use the information in them, too. It's supposed to be relevant.

Also, half the book talks about using Office XML from Windows in your Flash. If you need to show a Word or Excel document in Flash, for some strange reason, great. This might be the book for you. But for the other 99% of what you use XML for in Flash, it's largely useless.

The stuff you would use XML for in Flash, this book really doesn't help you with. It doesn't show you how to build helpful, object-oriented code libraries to make your work easier, for instance. It just shows you how difficult it is to process XML. Anything shown that might be helpful stops before it gets to the point of doing something, just leaving you with some trace output. Oh boy.

I definitely don't recommend this book. Friends of Ed and Apress books are usually of poor quality anyway, but this takes the cake. A complete waste of money.

I always thought that XML would be very hard to use but after reading
Foundation XML for Flash, it seems a lot clearer to me. I'm new to XML but
quite experienced with Flash and I found the book very helpful as a starting
point for learning XML. The book explained the basic concepts of XML very
clearly and showed me why it is a great choice for Flash. I can already
think of several projects where it'll help me out.

I really liked the different choices for working with XML in Flash. I didn't
realise that using the data components would be so easy or that I could work
with Web Services in Flash. That's opened up a whole new world for me.

I was surprised to find out that I can use information from Office in Flash.
In the past, I've spent a lot of time converting a Word document to a text
file so I could use it in Flash movies. I can see some real benefits in
using XML instead.

All in all, this is a great book, easy to read and I'd recommend it to
anyone who wants to learn more about Flash and XML. A must have for any
Flash developer's library!

I have been fortunate enough to have been able to meet and hang out with Sas during past Flash conferences, and the lady is sharp. This book contains a lot of great information with working with XML. The writing is very straightforward and easy to read. There are many step-by-step examples on integrating XML data into your Flash applications. She delves into the basics, and then takes you through using the XMLConnector, consuming Web Services, XMLSocket, making decisions on how best to use XML, and she even talks about XML from Word 2003 (ack) and Excel 2003.

A very long time ago I was using text files to get information into Flash, when I was new to the scene. I was a little wary of using XML because of all the nasty parsing I'd have to do, figuring out the paths to use when parsing, etc. But I jumped in and I hated XML for a little while. When it all started coming together, I grew to absolutely love XML. I cannot live without it now, and if you are new to Flash, or haven't used XML a lot - this book is simply perfect for you.

Pros about this book:
=============
-Offers pretty broad coverage of technologies and approaches
-Covers Excel and Word
-The examples are easy to follow and to learn from
-This book covers a very important topic
-Nice coverage of XMLConnector, DataSet & XUpdateResolver
-Covers Unity 2 Socket Server a bit
-Book is 1-column format, great to see more like this
-Makes XML more approachable for casual or newer developers

Cons about this book:
==============
- Would be nice to have seen XPath (MM's and XFactorStudio's) expounded on a bit more
- Several of the screen shots in the book are fuzzy or bitmapped (yes, its true)

As you can see, lots of Pros, just a couple Cons. This is a very worthy book to pick up and read, and possibly keep on your desk within arm's reach. Friends of Ed and it's signed up authors are releasing high-quality stuff. I am very glad to see this.

If you are already a XML guru, you might still be able to pick up a few things here and there from this book - so its not really a strict Foundation book... its a Foundation book with a bunch of material to take you past the initial handshake. Well done Sas!

I just purchased XML for Flash and am disappointed in the quality of screen captures and editing in the book. The second sentence in chapter one has an editing error, "How can you store your data so that is simple to use but also adheres to web standards?" The screen captures are frequently illegible and practically worthless. I won't purchase another freindofed book until they develop a quality product.