Learning Flex 3
Welcome to the companion site for Learning Flex 3.
Here you’ll find the source code and examples for the projects in the book.
This is also your place to submit typos, suggestions for improving the book, and questions about Flex in general.
24 Comments so far
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I am reading this book on Safari Books, really enjoying it so far.
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Stumbled across this book at Barnes. I checked it out over coffee and felt it was a great fit for my beginner status at this technology. I especially like the larger page size and the generous use of color. I’m about half way through the book now. I’m happy I bought it.
Besonders das Kapitel mit XML war für mich sehr hilfreich und informativ. Ein sehr gutes Buch.
nice, just bought the book. good stuff!
Excelente libro Alaric!
Muy informativo, práctico y conciso. El contenido me inspira a aprender más.
thanx for this lovely book !
Wow, I can’t believe how easy the author makes it for a non-coder to understand and use flex. Thanks!
Excellent book!! There is enough stuff here so you can learn offline (like on a train or over coffee) then it is easy enough to grab FlexBuilder and then start experimenting online.
Excellent format, easy to read and always appreciate the context of when to use a technique instead of just how to use a technique.
Hi Alaric, great book so far. I’m in chapter 10. I hit a snag on page 148. When using my local contacts.xml file, I was initially able to read in that file fine. However, after the initial run, I get a dialog box with several errors starting with the following error, and the DataGrid is empty in my app:
[RPC Fault faultString="Error #2148: SWF file file:///Users/scott/Documents/Flex Builder 3/ContactManagerForm/bin-debug/ContactManagerForm.swf cannot access local resource contacts.xml. Only local-with-filesystem and trusted local SWF files may access local resources." faultCode="InvokeFailed" faultDetail="null"]
at …
I tried creating a crossdomain.xml in /src following your example, but that didn’t work. I can access http://greenlike.com/…/contacts.xml no problem, though. Is it that I have to publish my app and then place the crossdomain.xml file within my WebServer/Documents root (and if so, why would it have worked fine initially)? Or what? Thanks!
I figured it out. I didn’t have to publish my app. I just put both the contacts.xml and crossdomain.xml files on my webserver documents root, and it worked. Thanks
That’s a common problem. Flex Builder is supposed to set your computer up so that you don’t get this error with local files within Flex projects, but sometimes it’s flaky. It’s correct that your project will work fine when pushed to a server, but you may continue to get this security error otherwise. Another workaround is to use Adobe’s Settings Manager (http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager04.html) to set your computer up to allow local access to files for that particular project/folder.
I am looking to use Flex for RIA application on Linux Red Hat with remote connection to Oracle database or flat files to produce graphs with charting engine, zoom in on graph data to see the details of data points. Can you please point how I can use flex and if it supports these features.
Alex, Flex is server agnostic, meaning you can feed it from a database or flat file such as XML without worry. It comes with a nice set of charting components, though you’d need to write custom code to have the data zoom capabilities.
As a result of this book, I was very excited to start using Flex, but after downloading and installing the demo version, none of the videos or tutorials work! Trying to get help from Adobe was a waste of an hour of my life. My Vista machine has run remarkably well until now, but why not with Flex?
I get “JAVA 2 Platform Standard Edition binary is not responding” and “Exception Processin gMessage 0xc0000013 Parameters 0×761D92A00×0000004 0×761D92A0 0×761D92A0″
I’ve tried reinstalling JAVA and Flex, updating both, rebooting, etc. Oh well. Maybe videos work if you buy Flex Builder 3. Anyway, the book is well-written and I’ll try to use Flex without videos.
Im following Chapter 5, and Im running into a problem. Im doing the section thats called “How to Write a Function” and Im following the text exactly as its written in the book. I have inserted the mx:Script tags after the closing application tags, and I keep getting an error that says
“The markup in the document following the root element must be well-formed”
Im not sure what Im doing wrong, or maybe if there is a type somewhere in the text? Any help would be much appreciated!
Thanks,
Jake Rutter
Jake, if you're inserting the Script tags after the closing Application tag as you stated, that will give you that error. They need to be within the two Application tags.
Ah ha! Yeah I think there is a typo within chapter 5 of the book then. I tried it within the application tags and it works as it should. But in the book it says after the application tags!
Thanks for your help!
Jake
Yeah, page 50 states "Just place the insertion point after your <mx:Application/> tag, begin typing <mx:Script, and then press Enter." The forward slash is a typo. What I mean to say is insert the Script tags after the initial Application tag, so it's within the Application. All Flex code will be within the Application.
After struggling with Flash and Actionscript I came across Flex Builder last night. As a mechanical engineer I plan on creating a software module that brings together all kinds of formulas and calculations I have used in the past. Using Flex instead of Excel allows me to have others in my office take advantage of all these repetitive engineering calculations. I'm excited, does anybody else use Flex to create calculation modules for engineering purposes?
On Chapter 5, been using flash, mostly for animation and design for years. Right when I installed flex and popped opened the book I had the feeling rush through my like I first started using "Flash 4," that "WOW, I really like how this looks and can see the possibilities" type feeling, so far even though I haven't gotten to the real meat of the book, I love the flow.
I recently upgraded from Flex 2 to Flex 3 after not using Flex 2 for several months. I bought this book as a review and get up to speed with Flex 3. I am writing to say that by a huge margin, this is the best Flex book I have read. I say that with several books on Flex 2 in my library that pale by comparison.
In fact, I consider this book up there with the best computer related books I have ever read. Good Job!
First of all I have to say you have written a great book to get me started using Flex 3.
Wanted to notify you about a typo in the photos.xml files (used by photogallery) in the example source files. The lists use @title, as is described in the in the book printed XML, but all XML files have a 'label' instead of the 'title' attribute.
I picked up your book after going through both of the Lynda.com Flex 3 tutorials. I have gained a richer and deeper understanding of Flex 3 by just reading half of your book than I did wasting a lot more time and money on the Lynda.com videos.