Can you recommend a good FLEX online resource or book?

Question

Are there any favorite online references or good introductory and intermediate/advanced books on this topic that you could recommend to me? I'm a java developer, so I'm looking for something which would be familiar as possible as to me.

Answer 1

Essential ActionScript 3.0, by Colin Moock

Programming Flex 3: The Comprehensive Guide to Creating Rich Internet Applications with Adobe Flex, by Chafic Kazoun, Joey Lott

Also check the books section on Flex.org

There are some good video tutorials on lynda.com

• http://www.flex.org
• http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex

Answer 2

Here are some links that helped me out a lot:

http://onflex.org/

http://www.flexdevelopers.com/

http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/langref/

http://blog.flexexamples.com/

http://www.ifbin.com/

(added line breaks)

Answer 3

A great online resource is the Flex Coders mailing list and it's searchable archive.

archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/info.html

firefox search plugin: http://flexed.wordpress.com/2006/11/20/flex-coders-search-plugin-for-ie7-and-firefox-2/

Answer 4

http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596529857/

I won't give it a glowing review, but it's definitely good for the beginner as a reference.

Answer 5

I really got a great intro from Flexible Rails:

http://www.flexiblerails.com/

Answer 6

i wouldn't call them a great reference but if your a video learner, and want some sold tutorials, check out lynda.com (note: i can only recommend their adobe videos)

Answer 7

The Total Training Flex 3 video tutorials are a great way to get started if you're new to Flex. They cover a good variety of useful subjects, with a nice learning curve.

http://www.totaltraining.com/

Answer 8

I got great mileage out of the Adobe Flex 3 Developer's Guide, most famous for being huge and freely available on PDF. A little known fact: You can order it in print.

I blogged about it at

http://williampower.vox.com/library/post/learning-flex-for-book-learners-what-should-i-read.html

The book set seems to only be available through Adobe's online store.

Answer 9

The "official" flex manual is online at http://flex.sourceforge.net/manual/

Answer 10

It's been a long time since I read a how-to programming book cover to cover, but that's what I did in fact recently do with Learning Flex 3: Getting up to Speed with Rich Internet Applications by Alaric Cole (O'Reilly). The text is written for beginners, yet it covers some advanced topics along the way in side boxes (e.g., the Flex layout engine). I particularly liked that the examples came naturally, rather than in that contrived and mechanical format of "in chapter 2 we will build an address book, which we will turn into an exciting e-commerce venue in chapter 3, and which by chapter 4 will become a full-fledged event management application."

Also, the graphics are nice and colorful, but still not overwhelmingly flashy. No, the writing style and the book design aren't as important as the content itself, but I figure for a beginner book my primary goal is to make the odds as likely as possible that I'll stick with it to the end, and that's what I found with this title.