Server geeks, take heart: If you¿re sick of wading through pages of animation and graphics instruction just to find the nugget of info that¿s relevant to you, you now have an alternative! This volume leaves the designing to the designers and instead focuses on the core concepts that you (as a programmer and developer) need to master to create rich user interfaces, online advertising, enterprise application front ends, and more with Flash MX Pro 2004. By providing advanced functionality for creating sophisticated interactive content, rich Internet applications, pro-quality video, and easy device deployment, Flash MX 2004 Pro offers an ideal development environment¿and one that¿s being widely adopted across the Web. Using hands-on projects¿including two real-world applications¿and exercises to reinforce learning, author

Nate Weiss

delivers important quick-start information for those new to Flash MX development and goes in depth for veterans. A companion Web site includes downloadable code, links to the working applications developed through the book¿s exercises, and video demos.

Server geeks, take heart: If you’re sick of wading through pages of animation and graphics instruction just to find the nugget of info that’s relevant to you, you now have an alternative! This volume leaves the designing to the designers and instead focuses on the core concepts that you (as a programmer and developer) need to master to create rich user interfaces, online advertising, enterprise application front ends, and more with Flash MX Pro 2004. By providing advanced functionality for creating sophisticated interactive content, rich Internet applications, pro-quality video, and easy device deployment, Flash MX 2004 Pro offers an ideal development environment—and one that’s being widely adopted across the Web. Using hands-on projects—including two real-world applications—and exercises to reinforce learning, author

Nate Weiss

delivers important quick-start information for those new to Flash MX development and goes in depth for veterans. A companion Web site includes downloadable code, links to the working applications developed through the book’s exercises, and video demos.

For the developer
This book delivers exactly what the title implies: it teaches developers the 4 different ways in which they can tie a flash application with external data. The information found in this book is definitely not found in any generic Flash or Macromedia Studio MX book.

After reading the book I never regretted buying it and I keep it for reference. If you do not think that Macromedia’s "Rich Internet Applications" are any different than regular web applications, this book might change your mind.

I keep this book at arms length
I have used Flash since the very beginning and have always just used it for design and animation and always avoided the actionscript as much as possible as I thought the entire interface was a little too cumberscome to adopt.

I am a systems integrator and mostly just a hack type of coder, not really knowing any specific language to any great degree. I just learn what I need to get by.

However, when I picked up this book, I was a little intimidated because I thought it was going to be for the hardcore coding junkies (I mean look at the title for godsakes), but I was definitely pleasantly surprised.

I have been a very active amazon customer for a long time and have never ever written a review and I thought that this book definitely deserved my praise.

Let me tell you how I ended up buying this book, despite my own coding ability (or should I say inability) and despite the intimidating title of the book.

For the last couple months I have been scouring the internet, trying to find supportive material to help me build Rich Internet Applications using FlashMX2004Pro and ASP.NET with a MS SQL back-end and without the pure knowledge of ASP.NET, I thought that my mission was going to be a lost cause, or rather I was going to have to outsource my project. But, as soon as I bought this book, I was able to connect to a Microsoft SQL database and build a Flash App that generated the buttons dynamically from an XML file and provide dynamic content right from the first example in just a short amount of time. This not only sold me on the book and the author, but got me excited about what I was going to be able to do with the new FlashMX2004Pro.

The author explains everything in a very simple and understandable manner and ties the knots, instead of leaving you hanging. I felt comfortable in learning the examples along with the server-side code he provides. (btw, he provides you with server-side code examples in Cold Fusion, ASP.NET and Java for each example - which was over and above my expectations).

Just even with example server side ASP.NET code, I can begin to develop the project that I have envisioned and I now feel that I have the proper tool set and foundation to code any idea in full.

RIA developers -- Watchout, there is a new force in town. ;)

Truly a Great Book for Server Geeks!
As the book stated, this is a book for application developers (e.g. people that write web applications using Java, C#, ColdFusion). If you are one of those people, and like me, need to learn how to use Flash as a rich client front-end and retrieves data from a server, this is hands-down the best book!! I have never used Flash in my life and this is the first book I went through. After going through it, I was able to use Flash adequately and have a VERY GOOD understanding how to bring data back from the server. The author explains everything from the point of a developer (not a designer) and this helps tremendously. Note that this book is narrowly focused, but gets the job done very well!!

After you read this book, you will probably want to learn more about ActionScript 2.0, you should then move on to Essential ActionScript 2.0 by Colin Moock.

Finally .. A Flash Book for Developers ... About Time ....
This book is awesome! I’ve been developing CF applications for a few years and wanted to learn how to integrate with Flash. Problem was that most Flash books either leave out integrating with a database, OR assume the user knows how to use Actionscript and Flash. this book assumes neither and easily and clearly walks through WORKING examples in CF, .NET, and Java ... it’s easy to see why CF is the preferred method. Geeks, you know who you are ... this is the book that will show you what you need to know to work with those artist types. If only macromedia included the content of this book in their lackluster documentation.
Thank you Nate!
Between CFMX WACK and this book .. you are so set. Bow down to Nate Weiss for his righteousness in writing this book. I’m gonna ceremonially burn the other, less complete books that I bought before finding this one. It is, as the kids say, the bomb.
A deal at twice the price ... if you can only afford 1 Flash/Data Integration book .. this is the one.
To those that didn’t like this book ... do you smoke rock?
what part of "excellent book" don’t you understand?

This book is for server geeks - ONLY
I am an experienced Flash MX 2004 developer but I have little experience with server side programming. I hoped that this book would help to bridge that gap but it doesn’t - unless you are already experienced in ColdFusion, ASP.NET or JSP. The author says it is easy to translate the examples to PHP etc. I have some experience with PHP. However the server side code for the examples is NOT explained which makes it difficult if you don’t know ColdFusion etc. Knowing PHP is not sufficient.

In fairness, the author is very clear about the intended audience (page xxi) but the back cover of the book says it is for "web developers" and "exchanging data between client and server". If you are a web developer using (say) Dreamweaver rather than ColdFusion this book is probably not what you want. If you already know Flash MX and want to learn how to integrate it with server side programs its probably not for you either. If you are truly a server geek - you will probably love it!