DLG Software

Abobe's Flex documentation

A lot of Flex documentation is installed when you install the software and I won't cover that here. I just want to mention that the Adobe doc team has several exceptionally well written manuals that be downloaded in PDF format from its Adobe Flex resources page. All are useful, and the price is right (free). Some must-haves:

• Flex 3 Developer Guide - 100's of pages of clearly written info and examples. Trust me, you'll access this one constantly in the beginning.
• Programming ActionScript 3.0 - Great AS3 language reference, again with many great examples (tho I also strongly recommend the Moock book - see below).
• Using Adobe Flex Builder 3 - A guide to the Flex3 Eclipse-based IDE

BTW, much of the info contained in the above docs is also available in bits and pieces through the IDE's context sensitive help and online through Flex3 Livedocs.

Some good Flex3 books

I can personally vouch for the following books:

• Flex 3 Cookbook by Todd Anderson, Joshua Noble
• ActionScript 3.0 Cookbook by Joey Lott, Keith Peters, Darron Schall
• Essential ActionScript 3.0 by Colin Moock
• Adobe Flex3 Bible by David Gassner
• Foundation Flex for Developers: Data-Driven Applications with PHP, ASP.NET, ColdFusion, and LCDS by Koen De Weggheleire, Sas Jacobs

The first three books are published by O'Reilly, the premier site for developer resources. Like most O'Reilly books the three listed above are very thorough and clearly written (I especially recommend anything written by Colin Moock).

The Flex3 Bible is published by Wiley and written by David Gassner, the online instructor for the Lynda Flex3 online training videos (I also recommend these Lynda courses). A good starter book, it takes you from the basics up through the important classes (with good basic examples) and on to a large section on Flex integration with various data source/standards (SOAP, a lot on Adobe's ColdFusion and BlazeDS, some on ASP.NET and PHP).

The last book is a Friends of Ed publication, another great publisher of books for developers. It's notable for its large section on various data access methods including ColdFusion, ASP.NET, PHP, and LCDS (I will say that the title's usage of "data-driven applications" is a bit misleading, the provided case studies aren't apps whose execution is configured/customized through metadata, they're simply really good working examples of data access methods).