Professional Adobe Flex 2 (Paperback)

Wrox's Professional Flex 2 is one of the first guides to Adobe's (Macromedia's) new web application development platform. Flex experts Simon Barber, Rich Tretola and John Bennett share their experience with Flex 2, and teach readers how to leverage the platform to build rich internet applications. Professional Flex 2 relies heavy on practical examples, making this a hands-on guide that will get readers up and running with Flex 2 quickly.

Topics include:

• Building applications with Flex Builder
• Flex programming model
• Using Actionscript 3.0
• Developing applications in MXML
• Creating UIs with Flex controls and containers
• Data access and interconnectivity
• Creating custom flex components
• Charting
• Testing, debugging and deploying Flex applications
• and more

If you want to learn how to create robust, scalable applications using the power of Flex 2, then this is the book for you. This book walks you through all aspects of this powerful software and shows you how to build your own custom components. You'll gain a thorough understanding of the Software Development Kit (SDK), Flex Data Services (FDS), Flex Builder 2 Integrated Development Environment (IDE), Flex Charting, and much more.

Integrated throughout the pages, you'll find best practices that will enable you to begin developing and deploying applications in Flex 2 that meet your requirements. You'll also discover the most effective ways to use frameworks, MXML, and ActionScript 3. And with the help of numerous practical examples that you can tweak and apply in your own environment, this hands-on guide will quickly get you quickly up and running.

What you will learn from this book

• Steps for developing an application using Flex Builder

• How to build customized user interfaces with Flex controls and containers

• Ways to access data and chart components

• Tips for creating and extending Flex components

• Methods for programming and data typing ActionScript classes

• All about integrating Flex 2 with rich media and external applications

• How to use the Cairngorm framework, the Flex-Ajax bridge, ActionScript 3.0 libraries, and more

Who this book is for

This book is for programmers and Web developers who want to create Internet applications using Flex 2. You should have prior experience with Flash, ActionScript, and an XML-based language.

Flex apps you'll develop in this book

• Learn to leverage Flex Builder 2 for RIA development
• Discover how you can use Flex Charting to visualize data
• Integrate your Flex applications with data from web applications like Flicker
• Learn to use rich media in Flex apps

Wrox Professional guides are crafted to make learning programming languages and technologies easier than you think, providing a structured, tutorial format that will guide you through all the techniques involved.

Rich Tretola (Indianapolis, IN) is a programmer who specializes in developing rich internet applications using Flash and Flex with Java (Hibernate) for data persistence and the Cairngorm framework. He has written a number of articles on Flex, and his most recent thoughts can be found on his Flex website, EverythingFlex.com.

Simon Barber (Cape Town, South Africa) is a web developer and founder of ThoughtFaqtory, where they develop rich internet applications for clients large and small. Simon is well-known in the Flex community and has been working with the technology since its earliest alphas.

Renaun Erickson (Las Vegas, NV) is a RIA developer specializing in Flex, ColdFusion and PHP. He is an Adobe Community Expert and active in the community through his popular blog and the Las Vegas Adobe User Group.