This is the only "unfinished" computer training book I have ever purchased, and it will hopefully be the last. It stops abruptly at chapter 15, titled "Unfinished Symphony", where the author informs the reader that "I am finishing this book by not finishing it." Believe it or not, this is a completely accurate statement.

The major exercise that he had walked the reader through for most of the book, building a a book store application, is left unfinished. Many important topics, that we are told would be covered in later chapters are never presented. The author himself acknowledges that his editors told him to include more information, but his reply to his editors, and to the reader, is, "If I were to attempt to discuss all relevant topics, the book would never get out the gate."

We are told that the material that he left out of the book will available on his website (charlesebrown dot net). It's not there yet. Just like his book, his website fails to deliver.

If the unfinished nature of the book were the only problem, it would have been bad enough. But there are also many errata. Indeed, searching for and fixing the errors in the author's code may be among the most educational aspects of this book. Finally, the author's explanations are weak and often confusing. He seems to be aware of this problem, and you will often encounter phrases such as "If you are a bit confused as to why you did this yet, don't worry... it is about to get very clear." It never does.

After reading this book and following along with the example, I feel like I have some good idea of Flex, but not enough. It was really easy to follow (minus errors that others mentioned).

The title of my review pretty sums it all up. Even though the author guides you through a relatively straightforward example, there are numerous errors & missing files in the book. It's annoying to sit here and waste 2 hours to figure an error done by the author.

I guess the editors over at friendsofEd aren't aware of the term proofreading.

After reading this book, I feel like I have some good idea of Flex, but not enough. It was really easy to follow (minus errors below), but it doesn't explain the fundamentals as well as I would like.

Chapter 10, where you make your big project, has 2 big errors that had me stuck for awhile. The xml element used is 'image', not 'stock'. The custom event was 'bookSelected' not 'selectedBook' (pg 360, although later on it's right).

This book walks you through everything you need to know to get a fast start on Flex 2 and ActionScript 3. The examples are clear and concise and provide a great framework to build upon. I would recommend this to any Flex 2/AS3 programmer as a primer and an excellent reference guide.

I am new to the Flex 2 and AS3 and I needed to learn it quickly for my current job. This book really helped me to start and get comfortable with Flex. This is the only book you will need to start you on Flex and AS3. Everything is explained thoroughly and methodically. You will get to know not only how to but also why, and this was very important to me and what other books lacked. Mr. Brown does a great job of putting the chapters together the book flows so that it is not the mind numbing textbook but an easy and enjoyable read. This book is a must for anyone who is starting with Flex.

This book is my first introduction to Flex and Actionscript. I find the although I'm an experienced technical professional reiterating some of the basics is helpful in learning a new product and Charles Brown has defintely achieved that for me without being insulting or redundant in this book. There are a few issues with the downloads (mostly the assets not being in an asset folder as they claim to be in the book) and there are definitely some issues with the examples but if you're careful you can usually work them out for yourself. Over all it's a pretty good read and will definitely teach you a few basics of Flex, more so than Actionscript.

As a walk-through, I've found EGF2A3 to be quick and efficient. FoE and Brown lose a couple of stars due to a few mistakes in the guide's code, as well as the poorly organized download files. With a little research it's possible to work through each mistake and complete each exercise. The "finished code summaries" are accurate so many issues can be resolved by comparing blocks of code from page to page. The FoE website also has a basic forum that offers reader-generated solutions.

I'll return one star since, despite my criticism, this guide remained the easiest and fastest introduction to Flex 2. I can recommend EGF2A3 to advanced Flash developers as an efficient walk-through of Flex 2's core functions in only a few days.

I read the first three chapters of this book and it has tied a lot of loose ends together. I have some familiarity with all the technologies required to write Flex applications but I was having trouble figuring out how they worked together. This book does a nice job of introducing each piece of the puzzle (ActionScript, MXML, Flex 2, OOP). It assumes you have programmed before, most likely in a procedural language like C which is practical for me, since that is my background (20+ years). He does a nice job of comparing procedural to object oriented methodology so that you can transform your thinking. It is also a pretty casual book, so you get a chuckle once in a while. Not as dry as I would have expected the topic to be. I would recommend this book for those with this type of background.

Good coverage of layouts, transitions, drag and drop, and the like. Most common components were covered. However, I would have liked to have seen coverage of the tree component. The tree component is about as standard as the datagrid these days. I don't recall any chapters dedicated to it, nor is it in the index.

Not too in-depth in actionscript 3.0, but then that isn't the focus of the book. There is a decent enough coverage, and the author refers you to the relevant portions of the Flex 2 documentation for further clarification. Overall, it is a good beginning to intermediate book.

concise and to the point. great read even if you've done other languages like ASP or Coldfusion. Definitely a keeper.

I purchased this book to learn about Flex 2 and ActionScript 3.0. I am an experienced programmer, though only a part-time one at work, but am new to both Flex and ActionScript.

I really like Mr. Brown's approach throughout the book. Concepts are presented well and usually thoroughly. But, he always takes a step to the side to explain things a little further or tie the concept to other parts of the programming world. The approach is nice. It makes the book feel as though Mr. Brown is your friend or coworker, sitting with you to help you learn and explaining things in several different ways so that you can "get it." Parts are technical enough, while others can be very down to earth.

The only problem I had is that some topics are not addressed to a more advanced level. For example, the chapter on states covers the basics, but only with Flex (both source and design methods though). The ActionScript way of doing states is not even discussed. Now granted, Mr. Brown did say in his introduction that the book is a broad view of things, so this omission is not a big deal and can be expected since no one book can cover everything. It just requires a different source if you desire to use ActionScript to handle states, which is needed for handling states from runtime user input (something I am very interested in). To me, states are huge in Flex and I would have liked it if Mr. Brown had discussed more about it. However, my rating remains at 5 stars since this is not enough to lower it at all. Mr. Brown did accomplish what he said he would do in his introduction and the book is an excellent resource for learning and understanding Flex 2, ActionScript 3.0, and how they tie into other things like XML, ColdFusion, etc.

Also, the case study Mr. Brown has is a fully functional project that ties a lot of things together and includes a lot of both Flex 2 design and ActionScript 3.0 code. Mr. Brown leads you through the design of the case study in a way that makes learning and understanding the concepts easier.

I would recommend this book to anyone that wants to learn Flex 2. It was well worth it and it continues to help me develop in Flex 2.

Let me just start by saying before I picked this book up I had already played around with Flex 2 enough to build fully functional RIAs. Based on my years of Flash experience and from simply poking around with the help files and I thought I had learned how things were "supposed" to work with Flex 2. Boy was I wrong.

This book taught me the true essentials of Flex 2: data binding, proper use of containers, navigation, states, printing, and a lot more. Each time I would read a new chapter, I would have to stop and say, "Wow, it's that simple?" And developing Flex 2 RIA really is simple, I just had no idea so I always took the long, complicated Actionscript route instead of taking full advantage of what the Flex 2 components have to offer.

I admit that I'm in love with Flex 2 and I feel that part of what makes this book so great is the subject matter. Granted, it doesn't teach many advanced topics or explore creative ideas, but it does teach you what you need to know. I guess that's why they call it the "Essential Guide". After reading this book from front to back, my efficiency for developing RIAs has increased one-hundred fold because I now have a firm understanding of the simple stuff.

This book is well-written and has plenty (but not too many) screenshots to accompany the step-by-step walkthroughs. I also found the book to be well-organized and have a nice flow to it where it doesn't hit you with loads of information until you're prepared for it. Basically, if you look at the table of contents, you can rest assured that you'll understand each one of those topics by the time you've finished reading the chapter. Don't skip ahead to the end though, you might ruin the ending :)

I can't really comment much on the Coldfusion or Charting chapters as I don't have ColdFusion and I don't have a Charting license, but I'll just go on faith that they work as explained.

If you're just starting out with Flex 2, this book will give you the tools you need to start cranking out those RIAs you've been dying to create.
If you've been working with Flex 2 for awhile already, this book may still be able to help you out by showing you some of the simplified ways of doing things that you may have missed (just like I did).

This is an excellent book to get one pointed in a productive direction at understanding Flex. Its examples are clear and, except for some minor errata, correct.
This is a basic book, and probably not the last word in Flex development.

This book is carefully and well-written from a conceptual POV. If you are a conceptual thinker first, this book with get you up and running with Flex.

Learning Actionscript is another topic, but the author goes into enough detail to know where the Actionscript goes, so when you get your Actionscript skills together, you can start working in Flex right away.

Many programming books miss the big conceptual picture altogether, but this book starts from the big picture and helps you focus in on what you need to go on to learn from there. The poor reviews on here, I believe, were from people expecting something much more advanced and code-specific.

This book is well thought out and carefully written. It does exactly what I'm always looking for in a book, focuses on teaching concepts without getting bogged down in syntax. Having programmed for many years, I was tempted at times to read faster over the more basic concepts. However, I quickly learned to maintain a steady pace because an "aha" was often right around the corner.

For example, I was glad I paid close attention to the databinding discussion and caught the significance of the [Bindable] metatag. The importance of the class and filenames matching for class definitions almost got by me. And the explanation of drag and drop for controls where it wasn't as built-in was worth slowing down for. I found the discussions of datagrids, states, transitions, easing, the repeater, custom events and printing all very useful as well.

My compliments to the chef.

This book doesn't tell you anything. A true programmer would embrace the command line compile of flex and the author blatently avoids that. It took me 6 chapters before I learned anything at all. You would be better off just using the flex 2.0 reference online from adobe than following this book. It's a little rough at first, but adobe's documentation is all you need. This book was a complete waste of my time.

Very well written and a great guide for someone who wants to learn flex. The examples were well documented and accurate.

Back in the day (2003) before Flex existed I had always been trying to find a way to provide that rich internet experience (even before the term RIA existed) for my users, and I knew Flash was the key.

However almost all books at the time were geared towards Flash as an animation and design tool for making rich media experiences (animation, games, etc...), and none of them focused on Flash purely for making Applications - except for one: Foundation Flash MX Applications by Friends of Ed (co-authored by Cairngorm genius Steven Webster).

A very good book that helped me achieve making some rudimentary RIAs. But as a developer minded person, I wasn't able to get much further until Flex came along and enabled developers who operate on lines of code instead of timelines to make feature rich and rapidly engineered RIAs.

Fast forward to today, and the folks at Friends of Ed are out with their first Flex 2 book titled: The Essential Guide to Flex 2 with ActionScript 3.0.

The book assumes you have no prior knowledge of Flex, Flash, or ActionScript and covers a lot of bases including covering the basics of Object Oriented Programming, and how ActionScript implements it.

One of the challenges of writing a book about Flex is it's hard to isolate a topic and provide examples that don't require utilizing features yet to be discussed. So the approach that they take is to progressively (from a learning curve perspective vs topic perspective) introduce the features needed to fully discuss the primary topic. The result is as you go along your understanding of how things work in Flex progressively increases.

I definitely recommend this book for those who are interesting in seriously learning Flex, especially if you have no exposure to Flash and ActionScript. Actually the book starts you off so fresh that you don't even really need much programming experience to get going.

The Essential Guide to Flex 2 with ActionScript 3.0 will get you up and running with Flex in a couple of page turns. The author does an excellent job of explaining and demonstrating real world scenarios in his examples which can transcend into true enterprise development approaches when building Flex solutions. A great reference for your library.

This book is a great introduction to Flex. I think it's very easy to follow and covers some interesting things. However, I don't feel it's complete. Of course the author says so -- but more to the point I think it's leaving out some things. It is primarily a book on Flex and not Actionscript 3. The title is a little misleading. It does go into some Actionscript, but Actionscript is MUCH much more involved and there's more to it. I would absolutely recommend this book, but you will most definitely need more books about Flex and AS3 aside from this one. If you need to learn the most common needs in Flex in a hurry, please do get this book. I was able to get through half the book in about two evenings worth of time. It's a quick read and if you're familiar with other web languages you'll be set.

This is an excellent book that doesn't waste time and gets you up to speed in Flex 2 quickly. The author explains clearly how, what, and why you are doing each of the individual steps as you progress through the hands on tutorials. True, it is an easy read but you learn a lot by the time you are done. It is a great starting point and makes Flex 2 really fun. From here I'll go on to harder stuff. Initially, I did find some problems with the download code, as an earlier reviewer commented, but the author has fixed all that. All in all, this is a job well done.

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.

I've worked on several enterprise level applications (10,000+ users) and this book has helped me work through some of the initial problems I was having. If you're looking for a good book on how to integrate Flex 2 and Actionscript 3.0, you'll like this book.

When people ask what book they should start with, for Flex, I usually recommend a project-based book like this. I thought this book has good little projects that lead to larger applications/projects.

Fundamental MXML and ActionScript 3 are covered, and most popular features that folks care to play with in Flex (states, MXML, components, E4X/XML). Even some ColdFusion is covered, which compliment Flex front-ends.

As a transitioning professional and entry-level programmer, I was apprehensive about my ability to learn the Flex 2/Actionscript programming language. I have had some experience with lesser types of programming languages but, after reading and following Charles' instructions in this book, I have found a new zest to delve deeper into programming! With clear and concise instructions, and Charles ability to write as if he is right there talking directly to you, programming is no longer the darkness of the night, but the light at the end of the tunnel. Thanks Charles for your outstanding delivery of Flex programming. I can't wait to show off my new website with Flex!

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.

This is a good book to bring you up to speed on Flex2 and how it works with AS3. Flex is very different to Flash and many of the more finicky concepts and ways of doing things cannot be easily be learnt flipping through the manual or toying around with the product. This book will tell you all you need to know to get you to an intermediate level, where you are familiar with the product and various ways of getting key tasks done, such as how to handle states, transitions, data binding, animation, components, item renderers and more.

I highly recommend this book for those making the transition from Flash to Flex.

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.

Wow! I'd recommend this to anyone using Flex 2. The authors have done an amazing job with presenting concepts in a well-organized and compelling manner. I look forward to more great titles from this author.

Charles Brown has a history of being able to take a reader from zero to hero with a new application or programming language and this book is no exception. Charles begins with the history and evolution of the FLEX authoring environment and leads the readers through the steps necessary to get off the ground quickly. The Essential Guide to Flex 2 gives readers a solid introduction to Actionscript 3 and covers many of the controls native to FLEX including drag and drop, charting, printing and data connectivity. This book is a must have if you are looking to dive into the new world of FLEX 2 programming.

Todd Marks
www.mindgrub.com

This is a great book if you have very little/to no background in Flash/Actionscript, but need to pick up on the future of Flex 2/Actionscript 3.0. There is a lot of great explanation on how it all works. Definitely worth reading.

This book is for designers and Flex beginners! Very very basic and brief introduction to Flex 2 and some Action Script 3.0, but nothing in-depth. The examples in the book, for me personally, are way too simple. It's a good starting book for newbies and designers, but for serious programmers, this is not the one. The Flex documentation has deeper examples than this book. I've only been using Flex for about one month and this book seems too basic to me.

Really should be 5 stars but..The book could be really great once they get all the right files posted and the erratta page updated so you can at least complete the lessons! Until then don't waste your time.. Also there are several gotchas so be careful it appears that no one went through the book as a customer would! You cannot complete some of the lessons. I noticed they did put up an Errata page but so far only one (1) of the many mistakes have been posted. To be honest if they HAD had some one try to do the lessons they would have caught all of these issues....$50.00 is alot for a book that makes you work so hard....I am hoping that they fix these soon because the writing style and the lessons (when you can complete them) are quite good.....I have a great suggestion for the publishers...Test , when your done ..Test again..you know kinda like Flex developer have to ..just a thought and yes I am a bit bitter...

Once these issues are address it will be a great starter book...too bad for Charles these issues make his book less than stellar....right Now

This is a great starter book. If you're new to Flex this would be a great place to start. I bought this book looking for information I didn't already have, but it didn't contain advanced Flex/AS 3.0 content. If you're looking for more advanced Flex topics, AS 3.0 OOP design patterns, Designing Managers and Controllers, etc., this is not for you.