Rating: 

I expected to get a quick run down of how to go about making Flex applications - what all basic Flex applications have, the bare minimum, and then add items to a myriad of different examples to see how they work. I expected basic, simple applications since it was a short book and there is a lot of documentation out there for further study. There were less different examples than I expected, but it worked well for the length of the book, and for the purpose of learning.

What I was pleasantly surprised with was the run down of how Flex compares with Flash, and what's new in AS3. I liked the comparisons and explanations of how to code using mxml as well as AS3. Not only that, but he explains various ways to go about doing the same thing, or getting the same results. This, I find, is most helpful because then when you are creating your own files you'll be more likely to think of other ways to go about structuring and creating things. He also tells you tips and tricks and little known items about how Flex does things and how the underlying structure of it works.

What I didn't like about the book would probably be not being able to understand all the programming terminology, I couldn't follow along with some of the explanations. There was a nice section about REST, SOAP and WSDL but I don't know a thing about them other than they'd probably be interesting to learn more about. So if you know more than I do about these protocols and terms you'll get much more out of it. I also wish there was a bit more time spent on the connections between pieces of code. There is his companion site to download the code from, but it's hard to piece together where things are when you're reading the book and trying to connect one piece of code to another. Several times I wasn't sure which files I should be typing code in, and to learn I need to write it myself instead of just looking through code that’s already written.

I got a quick and fairly detailed understanding of Flex out of this book. It by no means goes through all components or some such thing - the online documentation for Flex can do that - but it gets you through a few examples that show you how to use Flex for a few of the most-used capabilities it has to offer. He also points you to where you can learn more, and it's not like it's hard to find more information about it beyond the book. I think developers/designers, current Flash users (if you know AS2 already it would be helpful), or others who are interested in Flex could learn from this book - I would only warn people who are like myself that it might take a bit of struggling through the terms and there may be parts you don't understand.