Where can I find good Flex documentation?

Question

I'm using the Adobe livedocs for learning and looking up on Flex development, specifically the Flex 3 Help, the Flex Language reference and the AIR developer's guide.

While these provide a good starting point, the quality is not, let's say, overwhelming. There's regular mistakes in the examples, some of the texts are redundant, or too short, sometimes even contradictory. For large parts, these seem to be put together not by unqualified people, but seemingly in a rush. What I am missing completely is better explanations of the internals and maybe some overview diagrams of how the classes interact with each other. I liked the explanation of event propagation and I'm looking for more of that type of material.

Any pointers?

Answer 1

If you are using Flex Builder, the help docs bundled into Eclipse are a bit more thorough than the online version (from what I remember). I highly recommend the following:

Programming Flex 3

http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596516215/

Very well-written concise examples. Also, contains the finest explanation of the Flex component life-cycle I have yet to read.

Tour De Flex

http://flex.org/tour

1000s of examples in a lovely animated AIR application. You can roll your own and submit them to be included in the application as well. The app itself shows the example and has tabbed source code view for every file used in the example. VERY well done and well-respected.

Answer 2

I'd like to throw in a hearty recommendation for Deepa Subramaniam's talk on the Flex component model as well, a talk she gave at this year's MAX, which was amazing and is available in its entirety here:

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

It's very dense, so you'll probably want to watch it several times and take notes, but I can't recommend it highly enough. Wish I'd known it as completely as she describes it a year ago. :)

I've also been trudging through the Flex developer guides (the ones available as an optional purchase with Flex Builder), and while they're certainly not the kind of thing you want on the nightstand (they're incredibly boring), they're also very thorough and are full of the kinds of gems you don't normally find in the mainstream books.

Answer 3

I most defiantly prefer to watch or listen to talks, these are the links to the MAX 2008 feeds which are still being populated with more videos each week. A definite must. Get the media player first then add the feeds.

http://www.adobe.com/products/mediaplayer/

Then use the following feed URLs

http://rsstv.adobe.com/Max2008Envision

http://rsstv.adobe.com/Max2008Design

http://rsstv.adobe.com/Max2008Develop

Also for beginner info + a little bit more experience try the following. http://www.silvafug.org/

Even though I've been doing flex for a few years now I got stuff out of most of the videos, even some the beginner ones.

almost forgot this feed to adobe media player http://sessions.onflex.org/1733261879.xml

this is from the flex 360 conference. contains loads of good videos as well.

Answer 4

Flex docs are the best solution so far for me (since I've been using Flex2)

While the online version takes a while to load, I suggest you download the "zipped" version available on the Adobe site.

Lots of books on Flex have been released last year, but only 3 are worth it in my opinion :

Flex 3 in Action Flex 3 Cookbook Creating Visual Experiences with Flex 3.0

If you're an ActionScript developer though, no need for books, just play with Flex and I'm sure you can handle it quickly

Happy coding (=

Answer 5

I've found the cookbook helpful. See Flex3 Cookbook, J. Noble & T. Anderson (O'Reilly 2008), ISBN 978-0-596-52985-7.

Ian

Answer 6

Flex After Dark is a site I'm working on for helping developers learn Flex. The site is still under development but there is lots of useful information, especially in the Docs section of the site (http://www.flexafterdark.com/docs). The goal is to shoot for quality over quantity by focusing on good code examples and common use cases. I hope it's helpful.

Answer 7

It was already mentioned but Tour de Flex was really intended for this. Also if you don't mind me doing a little self promotion... First Steps in Flex is a short book by Bruce Eckel and myself to help get you started with Flex.