Flex 3 In Action Is Coming…
In 2007 we decided to take on the challenge of writing a Flex 3 book, and although the Flex ecosystem received a fresh round of books shortly after Flex 2 was released, I found that in training people new to Flex that the areas they struggled in were not being addressed by the current set of resources.
The motivation to write this book is rooted in my goal to help the community; as a long time member of the Flex community (going back to Flex V1.0) the focus of my efforts has always been aimed on ramping up those new to Flex. The bigger the Flex community the more we all will benefit from the fruits of everyone’s labor.
Originally we had started off on a path similar to fellow Manning writer Peter Armstrong (see his article on self publishing); the print on demand industry has really evolved over the last year; but after researching I came to the same observation that Peter writes, the problem is not the writing - that’s the easy part! It’s everything after that where a Publisher’s value really comes into play.
We then approached Manning Publishing with our content, concepts, and approach and they exchanged their background, philosophy on tech books, etc… And there was a great match!
So… things have been progressing very quickly, and we’re wrapping up the bulk of the content now. As well, chapters in progress are soon to be available as part of Manning’s early access program (aka MEAP) that allows subscribers to get first glance at a book as it’s being written and have the opportunity to provide feedback (which is used to polish off the final versions).
About
Flex In Action (FiA) is a book for coders who come from traditional web technologies, and progressively takes them on a journey of understanding. Flex can easily be frustrating to newcomers who are used to the ease of their current language, so FiA takes an approach of leveraging your existing skills by using examples that you can relate to in your current tech vs how it’s done in Flex. It gradually introduces topics on an as needed basis so that you only need to worry about learning one thing at a time. Plus various ways of doing the same thing are explained in depth so that you understand your options… and lastly, FiA makes learning Flex fun!
