Author: Charles E Brown
Publisher: Friends of Ed, 2008
Pages: 600
ISBN: 978-1590599501
Aimed at: Intermediate level web developers
Rating: 3.5
Pros: A useful introduction to Flex and ActionScript
Cons: Not suitable for beginners or advanced Flex users
Reviewed by: David Conrad

This is a fairly basic introduction to Flex 3 - it starts by telling you how to install FlexBuilder and then moves on to the describe how to create a program and follows up with an introduction to ActionScript.

If you are new to programming then this isn't going to be enough. You'll need to find another book to introduce you to the language and perhaps programming in general.

After the introductory material we move on to some dry but essential material covering containers, events and components. The final part of the book deals with XML, CSS, the Repeater component and Drag and Drop. Then we have an interlude in the form of a case study - a book publisher's web site - before we return to study printing, charting and AIR.

Overall the order of topics works but you need to keep up as there is a lot of ground covered in not many pages. If you are complete beginner at any of the topics you might well feel left behind. On the other hand the book never deviates from the beaten track and doesn't consider any thing that would take users beyond the standard documentation. It's more a matter of illustrating the basic ideas.

This would suit an intermediate level web developer with a rough knowledge of JavaScript, HTML, XML and CSS that could be generalised to the relevant Flex topics. This isn't for the complete beginner or the experienced Flex user.