Preface

It literally took us several years to write Programming Flex 2, the predecessor to this book. We worked hard on that book, and when it was finally written and edited and proofread and off to the printer we sighed and looked forward to a break from writing about Flex. However, Flex 3 followed close on the heels of Flex 2, and as the saying goes, there’s no rest for the weary. We again picked up our keyboards and started updating the book for Flex 3. The result is what you have in your hands. And it is more than a simple update.

We thought Programming Flex 2 was one of the best books available for Flex 2. However, we knew we could do better. There were topics we just didn’t have time to include in that book. With Programming Flex 3 we wanted to not only update the book for Flex 3, but also expand our coverage to include things that weren’t in the first book. We think we achieved that goal.

The most notable additions to Programming Flex 3 are in Chapter 20, Chapter 21, and Chapter 22. In Chapter 20, we go into great detail on everything you need to know to add Flex applications to web pages, which we think is an important (if not crucial) topic. Chapter 21 covers building Adobe AIR desktop applications using Flex. And Chapter 22 contains the synthesis of everything else we discuss throughout the book. This is the one addition we think is perhaps the most important, since it helps explain how to take everything you’ve learned about Flex in preceding chapters and use that knowledge to build a real-world application.

However, we didn’t merely add new chapters to the book. We also revised and updated all the chapters in the book. Some chapters didn’t require much updating because there were minimal changes for the relevant features between Flex 2 and Flex 3. On the other hand, other chapters required extensive updates and additions. If you read Programming Flex 2 then you’ll find lots of new or revised content in this book.

Flex 3 is huge in scope, even bigger than Flex 2. Although the learning curve is not steep (it’s actually very easy to get started building Flex 3 applications), it is a long learning curve simply because of the massive amount of features packed into the framework. The official Flex documentation is quite good at telling you how to do something once you know what you’re looking for. Therefore, we made it our goal to present to you a book that fills in the gaps and helps you to get comfortable enough with Flex that you can start using it right away. It is our intention in this book to provide you with practical advice from our own experiences learning Flex, and from our longer-term experiences building rich Internet applications using Flash Platform technologies.

We really feel that Flex 3 is a fantastic product and a great way to build applications. Although this is a technical book, we have poured our enthusiasm into our writing, and we’d like to think you will share our enthusiasm as you read this book. We feel that Flex 3 is a far better way to build rich Internet applications than any alternative currently on the market, and we think that as you read this book and learn how to work with Flex, you’ll agree. With Flex, you have few (if any) problems involving cross-browser compatibility, network data communication is a snap, and the framework is built with solid object-oriented principles and standards in mind. In short, we feel it’s the fastest way to build the coolest, most stable applications.