I’m pleased to say that the first draft of my latest book, “Effortless Flex 4 Development”, is now complete. In fact, I’ve already done the rewrites on half the book and should complete those this week. The final table of contents is below. The table lists all of the top level sections, but doesn’t reflect specifics covered in subsections or addressed in sidebars. There are a couple of minor topics that I wanted to get in there if there was room, such as effects, and I’ll write those up in this blog instead. Continue Reading…
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Peachpit Press, publisher of my forthcoming “Effortless Flex 4 Development” book, has published an excerpt of the book online, free for anyone to read. (Technically New Riders is the publisher, but New Riders is owned by Peachpit.) The article represents the first several pages from Chapter 4 of the book, “Event Management”. Even if you don’t yet know Flex and ActionScript, you should still be able to follow along. Most importantly, Flex is largely an event-driven approach to application development (conversely, Flash Professional is primarily a timeline-driven approach), so this section is really a key insight into what it’s like to use Flex.
I believe another excerpt from the book will be published soon, and I’m currently working on two “5 Tips in 5 Days” blog posts for Peachpit’s site. One will be specifically on the Flex 4 framework and the other will be on Flash Builder. Flash Builder, in case you’re not familiar with it, used to be called Flex Builder and is just a commercial IDE for developing using Flex. You don’t have to use Flash Builder as the Flex 4 framework and its SDK are available for free, but it does ease the process significantly. The book does not assume you’re using Flash Builder, either. There are specific instructions for how to create Flex applications using a text editor and the command-line IDE, but there are also areas that cover how you would do X or Y using Flash Builder. Most of the book focuses on the Flex framework, so it doesn’t matter what development tools you’re using.
For those of you that read this blog regularly (-ish), my apologies for the lack of posts last week. I’m continuing to work my way through my new book, “Effortless Flex 4 Development,” and it’s taking up all of my time. But I’m over two-thirds of the way through the book now, having just completed the second section. That’s the heart of the book, focusing on data and communications. The last third of the book will be written over the next couple of weeks. It covers “finishing touches” types of concepts, such as styling applications, effects, using popup windows, and so forth. These will be shorter chapters and involve information that you wouldn’t necessarily use on every project.
I believe the book will be published in July. The list price is about $45 (US), but you can normally get books for much cheaper than that. Amazon currently has it at $33.44. You can also read the book as I’m writing it via Safari Books Online.
When I wrote my C++ Programming: Visual QuickStart Guide book back in 2005 (with co-auth0r Andreas Signer), I had to decide what software to recommend for C++ beginners. As with most languages, full-time experienced programmers may like serious, complete tools, or commercial products, but I often find that software on that level can provide too much of a learning curve for someone simultaneously trying to learn a programming language. What I like to recommend in my books is software that’s approachable, reliable, and, preferably, free. So, for the C++ book, I recommend Bloodshed’s Dev-C++ for Windows.
At that time, Dev-C++ was more or less a standard for beginners (and it was free). I used either version 4 or the beta of version 5 for the book and for years readers seemed to be fine with Dev-C++. Now it seems that either Dev-C++ is no more or just not a good enough option. The Dev-C++ Web site is down, although I don’t know yet if the site is down for good. You can still download Dev-++ from Sourceforge, but it’s the five-year old version.
In searching for good alternatives to Dev-C++ (I don’t use Windows regularly, so couldn’t make a recommend on that myself), I came across a post about why you shouldn’t use Dev-C++. That writer recommended Programmer’s Notepad, Code::Blocks (which also runs on Mac OS X and Linux), and the free edition of Microsoft’s Visual Studio. I haven’t used any of these, so I can’t personally recommend them, although I have used the full version of Microsoft’s Visual Studio (years ago for C# programming in ASP.NET), and can attest to how good it is as an IDE. In the comments to that post, some readers still say that Dev-C++ is so much easier to learn with than the others, so I wouldn’t rule that out entirely.
My forthcoming book, Effortless Flex 4 Development, is now available to be read online through Safari Books Online. The direct URL is http://my.safaribooksonline.com/9780131389465. Through that site you’ll be able to read the book as I write it and make comments on the work. Frequently those comments can be used to fix or improve the finished version of the book. Note that Safari Books Online is a paid service but there is a free 10 day/100 page trial.
