Flex 3 in Action

I was very excited when I got an email to review the excellent Flex 3 In Action book from Manning. If like most developers looking to venture into the world of rich internet applications, then this is a must-have book.

Started off looking at the table of contents to see how and where to begin or have a sneak peek, it turned out that no matter where you looked, you would definitely find it quite easy to approach. Flex 3 In Action was written from a stand point of a tutorial - meaning that most of the sections have been thought out quite well making it easy follow. Unlike most technical books, this one shows you how to develop each of the sample app in tutorial format - taking you through each step as you go along. You can't get anything much simpler than that.

Coming in at 579 pages, Flex 3 In Action has 24 chapters divided into 3 parts. The first part starts by introducing you to the technologies and platform behind Flex and Actionscript development. This covers everything from getting started, working with forms, to layouts, getting user input, trees and other components - all with extensive and complete examples.

The second section takes a much deeper step tackling topics such as working with event handlers, dealing with network connections and XML Web Services; Pop ups, classes and reuse-abilities. The final section covers every other things you'd need to know about skinning Flex 3 applications, testing, debugging and building & deploying.

To give you a taste of what to expect in Flex 3 In Action, Manning is making 2 chapters available for download [pdf]...These are Flex Layout and Navigation and Testing and Debugging Flex Apps.

I highly recommend this book, if you are serious and looking to get into Flex 3 programming, I would suggest you get a copy. But if you'd like to wet you appetite first, then go ahead and download the free sample chapters.