A: 

I got the clue. Its the two-way data bindings in action that used to work fine with Flex4-beta but break in Flex4-Final - according to the author Peter Armstrong :-)

Errata for the book is listed in this link

http://www.peterarmstrong.com/?p=214

You may need to remove the @ sign from every control except TextArea and HSlider.

-SiM