Macromedia Flash MX Professional 2004 Application Development: Training from the Source

[**this review was made by Denise Maitan from AIR User Group**]With step-by-step exercises, explanations, notes,tips and complementary pictures, Macromedia's book "Flash Mx Professional 2004 - application development" encompasses the simplest functions flash offers through to the most complex, like web services, XML e remoting services. Furthermore, the book is accompanied by a DVD-Rom with files containing prepared exercises and 30-day trial versions of Flash MX 2004 and Flash MX Professional 2004. The book is really well structured, with instructions before each exercise detailing what the reader will learn, how long each exercise should take and where to find the related exercises on the DVD. The book is recommended for whom desires greater knowledge of Actionscript programming. It also give guidance in the use of dynamic + interactive product applications - through the RIA (Rich Internet Application) concept - and provides preparation for Macromedia development certification. A very good training manual.

This is actually a very good book. The flow is a little wierd, but it covers a lot of ground not covered in other books. I found the conversion from ActionScript 1.0 to ActionScript 2.0 not a problem, except in one area - flash remoting and ActionScript 2.0. But for flash remoting I have found the MM docs almost totally useless and no other sources adequate. Coming from a programming background, I found Stallons' treatment of some of the many AS quirks, and that strange Flash object, the MovieClip, and how to use it in AS, very helpful. I guess the standard book padding of loops, conditional logic, functions, objects, etc. is unavoidable, but I could do without it. I could really have used a better coverage of the 2.0 components, but there again the MM docs are pretty bad on this topic and I haven't found a book that does cover these. So I would recommend this book, but the jump may be hard for a first time programmer who is using AS 2.0 and needs to rely heavily on the "copy and paste code" learning process.

mx.utils.delegate. Just do a search on macromedia's web site of "What is the significance of Elipsis" Mike Chambers of Macromedia explains it very clearly in this article, in simple terms. This is not hard. They just came up with something similar to the Observer class of Java. It is easy to make the changes when working through the examples, just takes a second. 1) The author really makes it easy with the examples. She provides examples at every stage, you don't have to code everything. That increases the pace of getting through the book as you can gloss over things you are pretty familiar with and still run the examples easily. 2) She clearly has taught in her life, is a professional teacher in some sense. Has strong communication skills. 3) She covers the essentials clearly. I consider this a pretty good book for programmers who want to make the transition from a Javascript like mode of programming to a more structured Java-like one using Actionscript 2.0, and to use the built in Framework provided by MX 2004. I am not saying this book is fabulous, but I am not aware of a better book covering the same material.

When it comes to flash books on the market I always see them segmented into different things: Animation, Games, ActionScript, or Design related. There are a limited amount of books available for someone looking at flash for pure application development. This book is great if you come from a middleware programming background (as I did) with languages such as ColdFusion, ASP, or PHP. Flash MX 2004 Professional gives you a wonderful palate of components to make your application development much easier, but with that power comes the responsibility of learning ActionScript 2.0 (a strongly typed Object Oriented Programming Language). For many people without the benefit of any kind of OOP background, this book will be crucial to teach you the principals and apply them to your application. If you already have OOP background, there is nothing stopping you from starting anywhere you wish in the book, the contents on the DVD that accompanies the book contains solutions to each section so all you have to do is pick up one section back from where you want to start, and move forward. Those that complain about constantly saving the files or moving them, it's because you are going from start to end of the book and debugging your application might be tricky so it's helpful to have the solutions there at each section so you can compare where you may have gone wrong. Jeanette Stallons is a talented trainer / author and she does a great job in this book of getting the principals out there with easy to use examples and lots and lots of great information. This is a huge book and an excellent learning guide.

This is a great starting point if you are new to flash application development. It covers all the basics of what you need to know in order to start developing RIA's using Flash MX 2004.It's *NOT* an "advanced" book by any means, and it's not a reference, but it IS a good book if you want to learn. It mirrors Jeanette's training course that she developed for Macromedia (she is a Macromedia employee).