What is a good resource for learning Flex as a .NET developer?

Question

What is a good resource for learning Flex as a .NET developer?

Answer 1

This isn't specifically for .NET developers but very heplful in that all examples come with source code: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/tourdeflex/.

There is always the Adobe media player (http://www.adobe.com/products/mediaplayer/). Once this is loaded add the feed http://sessions.adobe.com/FlexInAWeek/feed.xml. This will bring up more than 40 video tutorials that explain pretty much everything needed to use Flex and Flex Builder.

Answer 2

Check out this blog site from Sean Moore: http://seantheflexguy.com/blog/2009/02/27/how-do-i-learn-flex/ He has put together a extensive list of links that would get anyone started. He has broken it down to the beginner, intermediate and advanced. If I posted anything else I'm betting it would be on that page.

Answer 3

To learn flex I bought the book Adobe Flex 3: training from the source (http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Flex-3-Training-Source/dp/0321529189). This only took me about a week to read, and I felt that it brought me up to speed nicely. The book is written in a tutorial style, that will walk you through the building of a a flex application alongside teaching you all the nuances of the framework. I found this style especially helpful, as I could actually write code that did something, and continue to build upon it throughout the different chapters.

Also, you may want to check out Adobe's training videos, I found these to be helpful as well (http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/videotraining/).

Answer 4

The Flex 3 reference docs are extremely detailed and better yet, free:

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

A good Flex book would be another route to go:

http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Flex-3-Training-Source/dp/0321529189 http://www.amazon.com/Professional-Adobe-Flex-Joseph-Balderson/dp/0470223642

The single most important thing you can do in Flex is understand the UIComponent lifecycle. All Flex components are based off this. Deepa has a great presentation here:

http://tv.adobe.com/#vi+f15384v1002

Before you take the time to learn a framework built on top of Flex, learn the Flex framework itself. Understanding events and the invalidation framework are critical.

Answer 5

I found "Flex 3 in Action" from Manning to be the best. You're going to need to come up to speed in Actionscript and MXML, and probably also familarize yourself with E4X. Each of these is a bit quirky and you'll want a better guide than Adobe provides online.

Once you're up to speed, I've found "Essential Actionscript 3.0" to be a good reference book to have handy for Actionscript and E4X. "Flex 3 Cookbook" is nice to have available to sort out Flex framework specific questions. These two books are available on Safari Books Online if you have a subscription there.

Additionally, there is an excellent blog maintained by someone from Adobe called 'FlexExamples'. As with all Flex references on the web you'll want to make sure you distinguish between examples intended for the upcoming Flex release 'Gumbo' from Flex 3 examples. Gumbo is looking to bee quite a bit different from its predecessors.