AdvancED Flex Application Development: Building Rich Media X (Advanced)

Many Flex books cover the basics?this book does something different, and goes far further. The authors, leading Flash platform developers at Almer/Blank, working with Adobe User Group communities, are the creators of the Rich Media Exchange (RMX), a social media network for Adobe developers. In covering just how the RMX was built, this book contains all the knowledge you need to build similar large-scale Rich Internet Applications with Adobe Flex. From the inception of the idea through to deployment, the authors show the techniques needed to plan and build advanced applications. You'll learn how to use forms, styles, validators, video, sound analysis, and framework caching, ensuring you make the most of the new features introduced in Flex 3. Powerful applications require solid back ends. This book shows how to hook up a Flex application to PHP back-end systems such as Drupal and OpenAds. You'll learn how various parts of the RMX were built, including the blogs, event calendar, jobs board, and advertising system?elements that come together to really showcase the power of Flex. The RMX is built by Adobe Developers for Adobe Developers?a rewarding community relationship that guarantees results. The same spirit is carried into this book, with the authors wanting and helping to take you to the next level of Flash Platform application development. In this book you'll learn how to Effectively plan, wireframe, specify, develop, and release large-scale Flex applications, and discover what other development tools you'll want to start using immediately Make your Flex applications look less like Flex with advanced styling and skinning techniques Harness advanced Flex form features, including coding validators and building your custom form components Implement a robust advertising system for a Flex application using OpenAds Build powerful, custom multimedia players in Flex, including video players with the native VideoDisplay class and from scratch, and music players with advanced sound visualization Summary of Contents PART 1 PLANNING THE RMX Chapter 1 Introduction to Flex 2 Applications Chapter 2 Defining the Application: Introducing the RMX Chapter 3 Planning the Application: Building the RMX PART 2 BUILDING THE RMX CORE FUNCTIONS Chapter 4 Preparing to Get to Work Chapter 5 Styling Flex Chapter 6 Collecting and Working with Aggregated Content Chapter 7 Secondary Navigation Chapter 8 Forms and Validation Chapter 9 User Communications Chapter 10 Working with Video Chapter 11 Advertising and Flex PART 3 BUILDING OUT NEW FEATURES Chapter 12 Building the Blog Chapter 13 Building the Jobs Board Chapter 14 Building the Event Calendar Chapter 15 Ideas for the Future: Extending the RMX PART 4 SPECIAL TOPICS Chapter 16 RSLs and Persistent Framework Caching Chapter 17 Search Engine Optimization for Flex Chapter 18 Building an Audio Visualizer in Flex Appendix The Evolving Flex Scene

User review
Know what you are getting into,,.
This book does a very good job of describing the decision making processes that go into using a particular piece of technology with Flex and how they apply this to their application which is actually titled `Rich Media X` (a blog/forum/user group app). If you want to see how or if you can integrate Drupal and Flex, this is probably a pretty good book. If you are looking for a book on a particular Flex framework like Cairngorm or what have you, it is not.

What I think people are finding deceptive about this book is the `Flex Application Development`, the AdvancED label, and the idea that you will be able to layout a Flex application from start to finish (and you will, just most likely not the application you had in mind).

This book I see as being a great book to understand what is possible with Flex. I do not see this as a great book to learn Flex coding practices, coding frameworks, and anything else one might assume would be present in something titled Flex Application Development.

If you go into this looking for meat and potatoes and coming away from this book full of Flex YOU WILL be disappointed. 5 stars for what it covers well, but take 1 star away for hungering for more.

User review
Not very advancED
The only problem with this book is that it's not AdvancED as they claim in the title. It's aimed for beginners who never worked on a bigger projects before. The way the authors approached building of RMX application is pretty cool, and newbies will learn something from them. There isn't any depth in the book though, everything they touch upon, and they touch many many things, is pretty shallow. Be it Project Management, Action Script, Flex, MXML, Skinning, SEO, it's all pretty basic. But as I said, I recommend it to anyone who wants to start doing Flex apps professionally.

User review
A great book
This is a great book to learn how to build Flex Rich Internet Application. It is easy to read and follow, and it also includes SEO omptimization techniques for higher ranking in SEO results. Highly recommended!

User review
Good and bad
I have mixed feelings about this book which I got because it was one of the first to cover Flex 3.

I think it is a bit weak on the pure Flex bit - I just can't see someone actually learning Flex out of it, though they will get a pretty good feel for what Flex does. It presents just enough information to explain their application, the RMX, no more. The coding examples are also somewhat hard to follow, with code being all over the place. Yes, it might be real-life production/business code but that doesn't mean that it is automatically great for teaching. Simpler, more illustrative, tighter code would have been better.

On the other hand, the book does a much better job at presenting the big picture of a Flex website and how all the parts fit together, almost at a business/planning level. The wireframe chapters and how to integrate ads are great. Also, though I don't use PHP+Drupal, which they use as a backend, I definitely came away with a confirmation that Flex wasn't tied to particular backend server technologies. If you do use PHP and Drupal, you will get more value out of it for sure.

All in all, a 3.5/5 book.

User review
AdvancED Flex Application Development
This book is not all about FLEX it spends time covering the creation of RMX which is not what i wanted at all. The authors are idiots and don't focus mainly on flex. If you want to learn flex puchase something else. If you are interested in their (the authors) project and what they use in their project spend 42.00. WHAT A WAISTE!!