The best way to showcase a powerful new technology is to demonstrate its real-world results, and that's exactly what this new Cookbook does with Adobe Flex 3. Wide ranging and highly practical, Flex 3 Cookbook contains more than 300 proven recipes for developing interactive Rich Internet Applications and Web 2.0 sites. You'll find everything from Flex basics, to solutions for working with visual components and data access, to tips on application development, unit testing, and using Adobe AIR. You also get ideas from the development community. Through its Flex Cookbook website (www.adobe.com/devnet/), Adobe invited Flex developers to post their own solutions for working with this technology, and from hundreds of posts, the authors chose the best and most useful solutions to supplement Flex 3 Cookbook. Each recipe inside provides a solution to a common problem, explains how and why it works, and offers sample code that you can put to use immediately. Topics include:

• Containers and dialogues

• Working with Text

• Data driven components

• DataGrid and Advanced DataGrid

• ItemRenderers and Editors

• Images, bitmaps, videos, and sounds

• CSS, styling, and skinning

• States and effects

• Working with Collections, arrays, and DataProviders

• Using DataBinding

• Validation, formatting, and regular expressions

• Using Charts and data visualization

• Services and Data Access

• Using RSLs and Modules

• Working with Adobe AIR

Whether you're a committed Flex developer or still evaluating the technology, you'll discover how to get quick results with Flex 3 using the recipes in this Cookbook. It's an ideal way to jumpstart your next web application.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 10 Ratings

You've Got Questions, Here are the Answers - 2008-07-09
Reviewer Rating:
In my progression as a budding Flex developer I have reached the point where I'm passed the "getting started" tutorials but still not a master of anything with the language. My questions have from general concepts to the much more specific. This book is perfectly tailored to provide the answers I needed.

The format of the publication is set up nicely as it states a problem and then explains a solution. The way I usually judge a book's worth is to attack it with a specific question in mind, and then see how well it helps me solve the problem. The Flex 3 Cookbook passed with flying colors.

I needed some help wrapping my mind around manipulating data in an ArrayCollection. Section 13.1 called 'Add, Sort, and Retrieve Data from an ArrayCollection' guided me to a much better understanding of ArrayCollections. My question was answered, although there was a typo in the example code, hence the 4-star rating rather than 5.

Excellent Resource - 2008-06-14
Reviewer Rating:
The Flex 3 Cookbook is an amazing resource, and it should be found in the library of any Flex developer. Its solution based training provides motivation for completing projects while filling in potential gaps of knowledge. Not the definitive book, but an excellent resource.

Godd book as cookbook - 2008-12-02
Reviewer Rating:
"Flex 3 Cookbook" provides recipes to over 300 most common dishes. It wasn't authors' intention to lead an introductory course to Flex and ActionScript and so, the book does not contain information on language constructs, syntax and principles.

Content is divided into clearly themed chapters, each of which contains related recipes. Each recipe is made up of 3 parts: Problem, Solution and Discussion. The first part serves as an introduction and description of the problem, Solution gives a concise walk-through and Discussion explains the decisions made in the Solution part. Each problem is well illustrated with adequate ActionScript and MXML code samples.

The book covers a broad range of topics, starting with a trivial "How do I react upon a button being clicked", the list is full of many useful solutions. In my opinion it is a good choice especially for beginners and intermediate Flex adepts. Thanks to the wide spectrum of topics, they will benefit the most. It can also serve as a reference used when an answer to a specific problem is sought - well made chapter division makes searching straightforward.

The book is written with clear and concise language.

Reviewed by Andrzej Grzesik

Level your expectations - 2008-10-26
Reviewer Rating:
I haven't read all of this book, but from what I've seen, it is pretty good info. The format is good, listing a problem, a solution, and a discussion. I've read some good and not so great Flex books and I have noticed books with Todd Anderson as the author have been good(see Adobe Air, create modify reuse).

-I did not read Flex 2 Cookbook - the information looks new to me!
-There will be some errors in any book, especially programming books. With the Flex technology changing so fast, I would rather see a book rushed to market than months spent trying to cleanup every typo and minor compile errors(as other reviewers have said). We can figure out what typos and minor compile errors are supposed to be.

I have approx 6 flex books and this one is at the top of my list right now.

Good but not much new - No charting - 2008-07-03
Reviewer Rating:
I was hoping for more than just the trivial examples that you can get anywhere. There are a few, but not nearly enough. No charting examples at all. Its clear that this compilation of ideas was created ad hoc and not well thought out. Even so, it has saved me some time here and there.

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