Flash XML StudioLab

Rating:
Summary: Experiencing your Porsche in the dark of a garage
Review: As Flash might finally emerge from experimental eye-catching gimmick to become the next generation front end for high commercial, dynamic web applications, this book really sets the wrong tone (explaining more about Tarot than XML does not match the book's title, right?).

Although writing the first four chapters must have been fun for the authors - for us, the readers, its just painful. Long and rather vague, XML is described from many angles without getting on a level where you really would know where to start in a practical sense. So when you really have to know about XML, or just need some reference, this book is most probably not for you.

Chapter 5, trying to compensate for the lengthy introduction, finally presents the XML object in warp speed. (If you are new to the subject, statements like "it would be so much easier if objects could be made directly from objects instead of having to remember its class" are more confusing than helpful, reflect bad style and do not really sell the idea behind object oriented programming).

Chapters 6 to 10 are not that bad when showing how XML shuffles the tarot cards. Still it might be too cloudy for beginners as the authors just lack focus.

The Rest of the book (XML Sockets, Perl Scripting, mySQL, PHP) gives you some ideas for the next books to buy, but definitively offer nothing you can start to do real business with.

In a nutshell: When having read this book you will know what XML is on a high level and how you deal with it once it sits within your flash movie. But this is not what XML was primarily made for.
When having read this book you still will not have much of a clue from where you will get interesting, business relevant XML data and how to make your flash application talk to the professional world of high end, high paid real world applications. Neither is there much help about dealing with end to end responsibilities. (test, debug, tune end to end transactions from Flash front-end, via web- and application servers down to databases and vice versa).

For my taste this book still remains with the classic, design oriented flash programmer rather than to finally extend Flash's scope into the realm of serious application development. The book's focus is ways too much on how XML is used internally within flash, rather than to make XML do what it was designed for: standardized communication across new and existing systems and new (web) services. Otherwise you might really ask yourself, what all the fuzz about XML really is.

As I have already said: do not polish your Porsch in your garage, take it out , learn to drive and experience the real world!

Rating:
Summary: Good
Review: last week I bought the book , and till now it looks SO gerat

Rating:
Summary: what on earth
Review: The book is too wordy, I think the reader donot want to read a story book, also it is better to put notes under screen shots and pictures.

I hope Friendsofed can notice the readers feedback. More content, few joke.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent book as a reference !
Review: The reason I bought this book is to learn about Flash and XML. I did not buy it to read long winded passages, with cute word play. It takes way to long to get to the point.
The book claims to be for designers but the graphics are ugly.
Do we really need two basicly blank pages to introduce each chapter? What does the grey bar at the top of every page do? What are the 5 grey lines on each page for?
491 pages long and 20 percent is wasted paper, get rid of the graphic noise and save a tree.

Take a tip from the quick start books or the o'reilly books, make everything that is printed work for you. Edit out the fluff.
The information is OK, but only when one takes the time to remove the graphic junk and word fluff.

Rating:
Summary: Pretty much useless
Review: This book is a waste of money. I would suggest you check out XML in Flash by Craig Swann and Gregg Caines instead.

The introduction, which admittedly is quite good, lasts over half the book. After the lengthy introduction, the authors spend little or no time explaining the actual meat of dealing with XML in Flash. Most of the latter chapters will state that a certain task can be done with XML in Flash, but provide no insight on how to accomplish this task. Maybe I'm just weird, but I already knew that XML was useful for Flash applications, and the reason I bought the book was to learn how to do it, not to be told that it is possible!

For instance, the "XML Download/Upload" chapter is particularly frustrating. The early pages of the chapter tell the reader that Tomcat can be used to link Flash to a server via XML. However, after this statement, the authors offer absolutely no information as to how one might use Tomcat to serve XML to Flash, what servlets are available to accomplish this task, or how one goes about connecting to a Tomcat servlet from Flash. In my opinion, this is like telling a novice driver that "a car can take you places," and then turning them loose on the highway.

If you want to learn how to use XML applications with Flash, don't waste your money with this book, purchase the book XML In Flash instead -- it's more in-depth, more concise, and best of all, cheaper.

Rating:
Summary: Pretty much useless
Review: This book is a waste of money. I would suggest you check out XML in Flash by Craig Swann and Gregg Caines instead.

The introduction, which admittedly is quite good, lasts over half the book. Unfortunately, after the introduction, it's Mr. Toad's Wild Ride until the end. After the lengthy introduction, the authors spend little or no time explaining the actual meat of the book. Most of the latter chapters provide some sort of vague concept, and then offer no direction on how this concept should be used or how to go about using it.

For instance, the "XML Download/Upload" chapter is particularly frustrating. The early pages of the chapter tell the reader that Tomcat can be used to link Flash to a server via XML. However, after this statement, the authors offer ABSOLUTELY NO explanation of how one might use Tomcat to serve XML to Flash, what servlets are available to accomplish this task, or how one goes about connecting to a Tomcat servlet from Flash. In my opinion, this is like telling a novice driver that "a car can take you places," and then turning them loose on the highway...

If you want to learn how to use XML applications with Flash, purchase the book XML In Flash. Don't waste your money with this book.