This book will show you how to create powerful Rich Internet Applications using Flex 3. After learning how to install and becoming familiar with the basics of the Flex Builder 3 software, you will explore in depth how the Flash scripting language, ActionScript 3.0, interacts with Flex's powerful XML-like design language: MXML.

You'll learn how to construct your applications using layout and navigation containers, and how to move between various states using transitions. There is coverage of how best to plan your applications and use the Model-View-Controller pattern to keep various aspects of development separated and ease creation of potentially complicated projects.

Rich Internet Applications rely on data, and this book shows how to bring data from various sources into your Flex application and check its integrity, and how best to display and interact with it.

Going farther, applications built for the Flash platform can now exist and function beyond the traditional confines of the web browser. Adobe AIR allows you to take your applications to the desktop, and this book shows how to reapply your Flex skills to take advantage of this new environment.

The Essential Guide to Flex 3 takes you through all the powerful features of Flex using a series of stand-alone, practical exercises. The skills acquired throughout the book are then brought together in the form of a full-featured case study application showcasing essential techniques that can easily be applied to your own Flex applications.

This highly anticipated new edition of the classic, Jolt Award-winning work has been thoroughly updated to cover Java SE 5 and Java SE 6 features introduced since the first edition. Bloch explores new design patterns and language idioms, showing you how to make the most of features ranging from generics to enums, annotations to autoboxing.
 
Each chapter in the book consists of several “items” presented in the form of a short, standalone essay that provides specific advice, insight into Java platform subtleties, and outstanding code examples. The comprehensive descriptions and explanations for each item illuminate what to do, what not to do, and why.

Essential Skills--Made Easy! Updated and Expanded for J2SE 5

The book teaches the correct usage of Spring in applications, and lowers the learning curve on J2EE standards. It covers useful features of Spring without delving too far into complicated features. The authors take advantage of less complex alternatives whenever possible, and shows how Spring can make you more productive in complicated environments where J2EE technologies need to be applied. The book covers the complete Spring web tools portfolio and deals with persistence and transaction management. It also introduces 3-tier application design and how to test these designs.

If you're interested in recording and streaming media using Flash Media Server 3 (FMS3) and Adobe's Real-Time Messaging Protocol, this unique 267-page PDF-only book is the perfect primer. It is not a reference, but a systematic guide to developing FMS3 applications using ActionScript 3.0, with chapters that focus on specific aspects of the server and how they work. FMS3 is very different from regular web servers. Because its open-socket server technology stays connected until users quit the application, you can stream audio, video, text, and other media in real time. FMS3 is also quite different from previous versions, a fact that web developers familiar with Flash Media Server 2 or Flash Communication Server 1.5 will quickly discover. Don't worry. With Learning Flash Media Server 3 and a little experience with Flash CS3 and ActionScript 3.0, anyone can get up to speed in no time. You'll learn how to install FMS3, organize your development environment with Apache web server, and use the management console before diving into the whys and hows of:

• Recording and playing back streaming audio and video in VP6 and H.264 formats
• Using the new Flash Media Encoder to stream and record video
• Camera and microphone settings
• Non-persistent client-side remote shared objects
• Two-way audio-video communications
• Broadcasting and server-side bandwidth control
• Working with server-side files: the file class
• Server-side shared objects
• Server-side streams
• Setting up a software load handler using FMS3's new server-side NetStream
• Bringing in data and working with configuration files

At the heart of every chapter is a core set of code that shows the minimum requirements needed for different procedures. Beyond that, Learning Flash Media Server 3 provides you with plenty of options for using FMS3's different versions -- the full-feature server, the streaming-only server, and the limited-user development server. It's a whole new world of media, and this book puts you right at the doorstep. Ready to enter?

What you will learn from this book

• Practical steps you can take to combine different developmental philosophies, processes, and construction techniques into a unified approach to software
• Methods for deciding which parts of a project you need to write yourself versus what you can buy or reuse
• Tools and processes you can employ to improve source code quality and maintainability
• How to create, run, organize, and measure tests, and then make them more useful to developers and testers
• Ways that programming by contract can make your code easier for developers to understand and use
• Recommended techniques for handling errors in your code that will make your application easier to debug and support

This book is for experienced software developers who are looking to improve their development skill set and bring a higher level of discipline to a project.