Recenzje

Na tej stronie zamieszczamy recenzje napisane przez członków grupy. Ponieważ są one tworzone także dla czytelników spoza Polski, przygotowano je w języku angielskim.

Flash Facebook Cookbook

Author: James Ford
Publisher: www.packtpub.com
Review by: Krzysztof Satoła
There is a place on the web were milions of people spend their time colaborating and clicking “Like this” buttons. The place is very popular so you can also find there Flash applications. Some of you might even think that it could be cool to create some Flash apps or games and publish them to this place. It could pay off, too. This place is called Facebook… Surprise!

Facebook and Flash (Flex, AIR) are good friends for some time now. For Flash and other web technologies Facebook team created an API. You can start working with the Facebook ActionScript 3 SDK (utilizing Facebook API) easily by reading Flash Facebook Cookbook by James Ford. The book contains over 60 recipes for integrating Flash applications with the Graph API and Facebook. It can also guide you through the Facebook philosophy and process: including the concept of setting everything up, working with Facebook specifics like authentication (using OAuth 2.0 protocol) or permissions, working with Graph API objects, FQL (SQL-like syntax only for retrieving data from Facebook), news feeds, status updates, “Like this” buttons, images and albums, groups, events and places, and even more. You will find there everything you need to start creating useful Flash-Facebook apps.

I had a few problems starting with this book. It seemed that some things were working in a different way on Facebook then described there. The book seemed not to be up-to-date. To make things worse the sample source code organization was hard to follow. I have been founding myself struggling for getting things done sometimes but even though this book helped me to spare lot of time (believe it or not).

The Flash Facebook Cookbook is written by a Flash practicioner, you will find there recipes prepared only in one thing in mind: to get things done effectively and properly. It covers not only processes but also tactics and strategies for doing things right. This is very important as doing it myself I would be forced to review tons of documents, tutorials and web sites which I always try to avoid.

The book contains a number of recipies which can be read separately but for beginners the best approach would be reading the book from the beginning because latter recipies use the earlier ones, building complexity one of the top of another, which makes sense. This book is a very valuable resource for Flash based Facebook integrators.

I have found a few editorial errors like mispelled words or lack of code (e.g. on page 50) but I think it does not matter at all. I “Like this” book in general. It contains lots of useful details and is a big time saver, too :)

Being Geek – The Software Developer’s Career Handbook

Author: Michael Lopp
Publisher: www.oreilly.com
Review by: Krzysztof Satoła
A few days ago I encountered and interesting book: Being Geek – The Software Developer’s Career Handbook by Michael Lopp.

Whether you are considering your next career move or just want to know why people in your company behave in this strange, insane, annoying (pick one or more that suits you best) way you will find some clues and thoughts in this book. All of them may help you figuring out what to do next in your professional life. This book can be handy while defining your own career strategy, and even if you are not considering a new gig right now it may help you to understand and survive your everyday’s life as an engineer or engineering manager.

As geeks we build our safe and predictible worlds with well defined rules. But sometimes some unpredictable things happen. The author shows how to manage and be prepared to the change and how to recognize it is comming. There are some very practical topics covered regarding changing your gig. How to make the decision, how to deal with offers, prepare to interviews, gather information about your next company, negotiate your work conditions contract and work efficiently in a new team (in an organizational structured company). Everything having in mind your professional grownth. Very useful in defining your career strategy.

A part of the book is devoted to managing time/tasks techniques mainly by prioritazing. The author also explains how to be effective and productive and how to keep balance in your professional life. There is also an interesting discussion on how to move from engineering position to management one.

The author analyses things from two different perspectives throughout the book. Sometimes he shows things from the engineer’s point of view. A geek’s one. Another time he considers the engineering manager’s points of view. As many of us the author were an engineer once and now moved to management. This duality has its broadening value itself.

The book is written by a geek about geeks and for geeks. It may help to understand your’s geekery. Reading the book you will have the chance to understand (better) profesional nerd either it is you, your boss or anybody else. Beeing geek often means diffuculties with outside world communication, presenting thoughts, skills and achievements with both confidence and being understandable by others. You will get some advice on how to improve your improvisation skills of the moment (if you are a geek of course).

The book is written simple, plain English and the author gets to the point quickly. No psychological jargon or unnecessary wording. This is also an advantage as we all are so busy not having to much to for reading books.

I especially like the part about bits, features and truth (Chapter 31). It is really fascinating how our social lives are full of life withing our project teams and it is always evolving to see/read someone’s analysis of it. It is good to bring to mind from time to time how healthy tension is really important in the hostile world of program and product management and of course engineering. Don’t you know what I am writing about? Just read this book it is worth it. If you are a geek of course…

Flash Game Development by Example

Author: Emanuele Feronato
Publisher: www.packtpub.com
Review by: Krzysztof Satoła
Flash Game Development by Example is based on 9 Flash game projects. Every project is structured in the same way. The author starts with conceptual and design aspects and then leads the reader through the process of creating from scratch a complete game. Many diagrams, pictures and code snippets help to understand the key functional aspects of every game. Projects address some development issues which need to be resolved like showing smooth animations, preventing player from cheating, using timers, managing game assets, just to name the few.

This book is great for anyone who prefers learning by doing. I really like its simplicity and clear explanations of game’s logic. The book is aimed to developers willing to begin creating Flash games. After reading it they should start developing simple Flash games on your own without any problems. A very nice book to read!

Flex Data Services, Hibernate and Eclipse

Autor: Michael Slinn
Wydawca: Michael Slinn
Recenzent: Krzysztof Satoła
If you like to improve your practical technology skills, especially those near to Flex, Java and Eclipse, you should examine “Flex Data Services, Hibernate and Eclipse, A Hands-on Approach for Architects” by Michael Slinn. The book covers a vast range of topics including Hibernate, JUnit, MySQL, AMF, Eclipse, BlazeDS, LiveCycle Data Services ES and others. The author shows not only how to set up and tune together different solutions, he explains why to use them as well.

In my opinion, the book is best suited for architects and developers on an intermediate level. Plentyness of technologies and topics covered there can be overwhelming for beginners. But anyway, if you like to know someone’s (professional) way of doing things and the reasoning for doing them, this book may be of your interest. If you need to work with Flex, Java and a database backend this book can be very helpful, too.

Flex 4 Cookbook

Autorzy: Joshua Noble, Todd Anderson, Garth Braithwaite, Marco Casario, Rich Tretola, et al.
Wydawca: www.oreilly.com
Recenzent: Krzysztof Satoła
Flex 4 Cookbook is written to save our time. It consists of hundreds of tested recipes for developing Rich Internet Applications based on Adobe Flex 4 framework. It let’s the reader to learn not only techniques of solving problems but also reasons behind them. In my opinion the Flex 4 Cookbook should be the most appropriate for intermediate Flex developers. There are a lot of code examples accompanying recipies which are ready to be taken advantage of in your applications. You can also find many references to additional on-line resources in this book allowing to suplement knowledge and understanding regarding a particular topic. The book is extremely useful and I recommend it to anyone who likes to have a solid off-line reference on the desk. If you like on-line sources you may be also interested in Adobe Flex Cookbook on-line which could be treated as the book’s community supplement.

Effortless Flex 4 Development

Autor: Larry Ullman
Wydawca: www.peachpit.com
Recenzent: Krzysztof Satoła
Effortless Flex 4 Development by Larry Ullman is a terrific book covering nearly every aspect of rich internet application (RIA) development using Flex. The biggest value of the book is very precisely and carefully selected information. You will learn basics and the most important things related to Flex very quickly. The book is based on many examples and short, easy to follow tutorials. The author equipped Effortless Flex 4 Development with many tips and notes which gracefully complement the main content. If you need to build or rebuild your overall Flex knowledge this book may be of great value to you.

Artificial Intelligence for Games, second edition

Autorzy: Ian Millington, John Funge
Wydawca: www.elsevier.com
Recenzent: Krzysztof Satoła
Artificial Intelligence for Games by Ian Millington and John Funge covers lots of topics but is mainly designed to help the reader to master one element of game development which is artificial intelligence (AI). The book covers a wide range of techniques for game AI including detailed explanations of AI algorithms, their purpose and usage.

As I have learnt from this book, artificial intelligence is about making computers able to perform some thinking tasks that human and animals are capable of. This includes superhuman abilities in solving many arithmetic, sorting, searching and decision making problems. This book shows how it can be achieved revealing to the reader a range of techniques.

The book is split into five parts: introduction for the AI in games, the substance of the AI (movement, pathfinding, decision making, tactical and strategic reasoning, learning), technologies and ways of implementation that enable the AI to do its job and finally designing game AI.

I think Artificial Intelligence for Games could be aimed at a wide range of readers but is most suitable for those looking for solid understanding of game AI and comprehensive reference to techniques used in top studios. The book helps to gain a deep and thorough view on modeling complex emotional states, triggers, and behaviors. To get the most from the book, you have to manage some time to read it and to understand its contents. If you need a quick AI solutions repository you should probably find another book related to a particular technology or computer language.

The book is associated with a website that contains a library of C++ source code covering the techniques found in the book. Hopefully the C++ code used in samples is relatively easy to read and includes many comments. There are also demonstration programs compiled as EXE files.

Besides many technical solutions to AI related issues I have also learnt from this book a few high-level things. For instance I have learnt that creating good AI is all about matching the right behaviors to the right algorithms and that often, a very simple technique used well can have better results then implementing complex the AI in the game.

This book is an open minder or a view broadener on many aspects related to the AI in games. It can also serve as a great source of good analysis, desing and prototyping examples of more or less complex algorithms which are about to use in specific projects. This is a very valuable title for any computer science professional dealing with Artificial Intelligence (not only for games).

Flash Builder 4 and Flex 4 Bible

Autor: David Gassner
Wydawca: www.wiley.com
Recenzent: Krzysztof Satoła
I know David Gassner’s, the author of the “Adobe Flash Builder 4 and Flex 4 Bible”, teaching approach from his famous Lynda.com courses. He is a great tutor. When I got his new book for review I was very curious if he was as a great book author as an on-line learning presenter. And yes, his new book “Adobe Flash Builder 4 and Flex 4 Bible” is a great resource for every Flex developer. This book covers nearly every aspect of creating Flex application and using it with conjunction with server side technologies like SOAP-Based Web Services, BlazeDS and Java, ColdFusion or PHP. The book consists of five parts: Flex Fundamentials, Designing Flex Applications, Working with Data, Integrating Flex Applications with Application Servers and some misteriously named Additional Subjects including deploying applications with AIR. Each part contains many topics. Most chapters are accompanied by sample Flex applications and other source code that can be downloaded from the Wiley.com site.

If you are a junior Flex developer you should read the book from the beginning. If you are extending your skills from Flex 3 to Flex 4 and Flash Builder 4, you may read chapters in any order. Either way the book provides you with valuable and precise information.

The book is very thick. On one hand this is it’s biggest weakness, on the other hand, the material gathered there constituting its size, is very well structured and presented. The book is optimized and organized. I could find any information I needed in just a few seconds skimming pages belonged to a particular chapter. I must say I admire David Gassner for that.

I use this book as a quick off-line reference resource. For more sophisticated topics I use it as a starting point in my research. The book helped me to move from Flex 3 to Flex 4 and let me make a better use either of new Flash Builder 4 functionality and Flex SDK features.

If there were only one book you could choose about Flash Builder 4 and Flex 4 (on beginner to intermediate level), one complete reference covering almost every Flex related aspect, you should pick this book. There is no other choice. Trust me :)

The Essential Guide to Flash Games: Building Interactive Entertainment with ActionScript

Autor: Jeff Fulton, Steve Fulton
Wydawca: www.friendsofed.com
Recenzent: Przemysław Kocznur
First i must admit that I’m huge fan of 8bitrocket.com (Jeff and Steve Fulton’s blog). It’s great place for flash game developers, full of valuable tutorials and articles.

Main goal of this book is to write reusable and professional ActionScript 3.0 game framework. To achieve this authors walk step by step through process of building 11 real-life games (ranging from arcade, puzzle to shooters). All source codes are avaliable for both platforms: Flash IDE and Flex (of course free to download through publisher website).

First chapter cover some basic features. Introduce to main game loop (with states) and some game framework foundations. Of course it’s based on some standard techniques (movie clips as actors, hitTestObject for collision detection, timeline for animations). Boring? Absolutely no! They develop two playable cool retro games just in 40 pages. Every next chapter brings more and more complex features to learn. To name a few:

  • tricky implementation of finite state machine pattern (show how to manage flow of game with this states) – some free tools, that can extremely speeding up prototyping process,
  • optimization by using tile sheets instead of individually bitmaps,
  • sound management,
  • deep description of “blitting” render method (explain when this method is important, and when is not – pages 233-238, is must read part). There is even a bit of history about blitting technique on 8-bit computers,
  • xml based level designing,
  • scrolling tile-based screens,
  • pixel-level collision detection.

For those who want to monetize theirs games there is great example of MochiAds system integration.

In my opinion, it is the most valuable book about seriously flash games developing avalaible on the market. The most important thing: authors does not avoid complex techniques, they just explain problems on real-life game examples. Highly recomended!

Flex 3 with Java

Autor: Satish Kore
Wydawca: www.packtpub.com
Recenzent: Michał Skawiańczyk
I want to read this book because I was working on project which has Java back-end. This book covers fundametals of Flex such as configuring environment basic information about ActionScript and Flex SDK. In further chapters there is useful information about connecting Flex projects with BlazeDS or LifeCycle DS and in-depth information about how to communicate with Java code.

Good examples help to understand communication between Flex and Java step by step.

In my opinion this book can be most useful to Java developers who migrate from Java to Flex and if you are an experienced Flex developer you can be disappointed with topics which are covered in this book. However, if you are a Java developer or just start to develop Flex applications I truly recommend this book to you.

Web Design for Developers

Autor: Brian P. Hogan
Wydawca: The Pragmatic Bookshelf
Recenzent: Krzysztof Satoła
Many web or rich internet application developers suffer from working with graphics, graphic design and designers who usually do not understand how their projects are implemented and integrated with code. On the other hand many developers know nothing or almost nothing about design stuff which make them feeling uncomfortable when working with graphics provided by graphic artists. If you are such a developer you should read Web Design for Developers by Brian P. Hogan. It is a programmer’s guide to design tools and techniques. The book explains key quality web design concepts clearly and effectively. This book helps to close the gap between designers and developers by teaching the latter basics of web design.The book covers many “interesting design topics” including working with colors, fonts and typography, designing mock-ups, building standards aware web pages utilizing HTML and CSS. There are also topics on working with different web browsers, accessibility and usability or search engine optimization. I like the way the book is organised and narrated. It is based on a scenario of building (or improving) a web site for a fictitious company called Foodbox. Throughout the book there are many usuful tips which can help save time later and deal with complicated things in simple ways.

Everything can be improved and this is especially true in design. This book helped me to understand better what makes the difference between bad and good design and how to accomplish the latter. It is easier to work with design issues knowing things I have found in this book. I think it is a must have for every coder dealing with design and usability of user interfaces. I agree with the author saying in the first sentence of the book: “If you’ve ever written and application and wished it looked a little better, then this book is for you”. I am a web/RIA developer. Yes, this book is for me and maybe for you, too.

ActionScript for Multiplayer Games and Virtual Worlds

Autor: Jobe Makar
Wydawca: www.peachpit.com
Recenzent: Krzysztof Satoła
ActionScript for Multiplayer Games and Virtual Worlds by Jobe Makar is a book about developing real-time multiplayer games. There are plenty of Flash based games in the Internet but there is not much information available on real-time movement techniques, latency hiding, predictive movement, maintaining game state and logic, pathfinding, messaging, authority and prediction, isometric view, avatars and creating virtual worlds, etc. All of these you can find in the ActionScript for Multiplayer Games book.

This book is a very valuable resource for ActionScript developers and architects wanting to develop real-time multiplayer games. The book is based on ElectroServer Java socket-server on the server-side and Adobe Flash/ActionScript technology on the client-side. The ElectroServer can be easily installed and configured. The author builds user’s confidence and experince in multiplayer game techniques explaining them step by step from easiest to more sophisticated ones. The book is full of awesome examples which can be easily run in FlashDevelop or (after writing a few additional lines of code) in Flex/Flash Builder.Reading this book, I have been learning about many general issues which have to be considered during a game development process. It helped me to get started with my own project without much wandering about and wasting my time (and money). The examples helped me to understand practical aspects of many development techniques. The book is written using easy to undestand, plain English. I recommend this book to any Flash/ActionScript developer new to game development industry. It is worth buying if you like to gain an overall, high level view as well as more detailed and practical skills on developing real-time multiplayer games.

PHP Team Development

Autor: Samisa Abeysinghe
Wydawca: www.packtpub.com
Recenzent: Krzysztof Satoła
PHP Team Development covers technical topics like designing to divide complexity, conquering complex problems, choosing the right process, improving and monitoring the process and helps in keeping things as simple as they could be. There are also non technical topics covered like ensuring effective collaboration and keeping the process and product quality.For me the most important aspects of team work in software projects covered in the book are dealing with the complexity of software, dividing project problems among team members and solving them. The book also explains the relationship between the process and the product and helps to move from no process to having a process. It also explains why a process is so important in delivering a successful outcome.

This book helps to understand better the value of process and project quality when working with a team. The author shows nicely what matters in endeavors to succeed.

There is one thing which is missing there. Even there are some collaboration applications mentioned in the book I would like to learn more about most valued applications from the author’s experience. That would help me to save time on exploring many available (sometimes not worthy spending time) solutions and be focused on valuable ones.

This book is about PHP team development but I think many problems discussed by the author apply to projects based on other technologies or languages. This book is consise, short and precise. It is ideal for busy professionals dealing with software projects on both technical and non technical levels. The book is also suitable for beginners who want to learn what is takes to work with a team and succeed. And finally, this book is of great value for every team or project manager wanting to know how to establish a straight path to success for her development team.

This book provide a wealth of practical knowledge. I definitely recommend it.

Papervision3D Essentials

Autorzy: Jeff Winder, Paul Tondeur
Wydawca: www.packtpub.com
Recenzent: Marcin Klimek
“Papervision3D Essentials” is a great book to learn how to work with 3D world in Flash environment. It is based on knowledge of Jeff Winder and Paul Tondeur, people who have a huge expirence in working with 3D technologies for big amount of companies.Book is dedicated for beginers in PV3D, but more advenced users can treat it as invaluable reference to this amazing library.

First chapters of book cover basics of work with 3D environment, including primitives, materials and cameras. All subjects are very well presented and introduced with a lot of samples, images and source codes.

In next chapters you can find more advanced information. There is very good overview of PV3D external model support, including trip through well known 3D modeling applications like 3D Studio Max or Blender. The huge potential of PV3D can be seen in chapters covering Filters and Particles. Last chapter entitled “Optimalization Performance” is a very good ending of the book. It covers very important and not so common information about optimalization of 3D world what is extremely important due to current Flash Player performance.

Whole book contains a lot of interesting examples, what helps in learning 3D concepts and library features. I recommend this book to all who are exited about this great technology and want to find more about it.

AdvancED Flash on Devices: Mobile Development with Flash Lite and Flash 10

Autorzy: Elad Elrom, Scott Janousek, Thomas Joos
Wydawca: www.friendsofed.com
Recenzent: Tomasz Wiśniewski
Flash Lite is theme of my interests from a few years. I have been waiting for the book “Flash on devices, Flash Lite and Flash 10″ for a long time. I was wondering about the form of the book. This book can both delight and disappoint. The target group for the book are technologists. It gives understanding about existing technologies and suitability for the creation of mobile applications. This book is a collection of solutions, which are published on blogs and forums. I think certainly people who are programmers will not be satisfied with this book. The book also attempts to systematize knowledge about mobile phones with different platforms.In Chapter I and II, we have information about the mobile market, and general information about Flash Lite. In Chapter III, we can find more specific information about Flash Lite 3.0. There are also presented forms of distribution of Flash Player.
In Chapter IV, we get a description of how to optimize Flash Lite applications. Thanks to the chapter IV, Project Manager, will know how much time he needs to optimize these applications. But In my opinion the chapter should also consist a summary of the processes of specific mobiles. The book help us also to learn how to create plug-ins in the WRT, and learn a bit more about the components on the market, and frameworks.

This book certainly has some drawbacks, too few practical examples, and too much theory. For those not sitting in a subject, the book seems to be wordy. For people who have all actual information the book shows that still only few little things have been made in this technology, and how much is a theory. Creating applications is a challenge. Most of time when creating applications in Flash Lite for many phone models,is the time primarily spent on research. I did not like the book described the Catalyst Flash. What was the purpose of this, I don’t know? In my opinion there is also no clarification of how to use the components.

Summary
The book “Flash on devices, Flash Lite and Flash 10″ is an attempt to gather information from various blogs. It is also an attempt to explain where are the mobile Flash Lite applications today, and how much they are behind the Flash Player 10.

Papervision3D Essentials

Autorzy: Jeff Winder, Paul Tondeur
Wydawca: www.packtpub.com
Recenzent: Krzysztof Satoła
Papervision3D Essentials is a book about a powerful real-time 3D engine for Flash. It serves as a comprehensive guide for beginners as well as an invaluable reference for Papervision3D developers. The book is readable and source code examples are easy to follow. After reading any reader should be able to build her own applications using Papervision3D from scratch. It took me only three evenings to build my new 3D ePortfolio web page based on Papervision3D (http://satola.net). I had no idea it would be so simple to achieve. There are configuration details descriptions for different IDEs at the beginning of the book, so it does not matter if the reader uses Flash IDE, Flex Builder or Flash Builder. Concised summaries at the end of every chapter helps the reader to repeat and remeber the most important things covered in the chapter. Examples and demos are practical. This book is really a real time saver. I definitely recommend this book.

Adobe AIR 1.5 Cookbook

Autorzy: David Tucker, Marco Casario, Koen De Weggheleire, Rich Tretola
Wydawca: www.oreilly.com
Recenzent: Michał Skawiańczyk
There are not many books and resources covering Adobe AIR subject on market and that was the reason why I decided to read “Adobe AIR 1.5 Cookbook”. It turned out to be ideal to have this book with you when you are doing any AIR application because it thoroughly describes every nuance of the issue. The Cookbook starts with instructions on development environment and setting information about a new application. Then covers the fundamentals of AIR with detailed explanations of every problem. At the end we can learn how to distribute our application in various ways. I can definitely recommend this book to every Flash Platform Developer.

Adobe AIR For Dummies

Autor: Richard Wagner
Wydawca: www.wiley.com
Recenzent: Krzysztof Satoła
I have tried avoiding books “for dummies” for a long time but when I saw “Adobe AIR for Dummies” I decided to read it. While reading I have discovered that this book is a very valuable resource for developers who need a well organized and structured book covering AIR in practice. This book serves as friendly, no-nonsense guide to designing and developing Adobe AIR applications. There is only one thing I do not like about this book. I am a Flash/Flex developer and this book is written for JavaScript/HTML developers. I do not mind JavaScript but it should be visualized somehow on the book cover or in the title that this book reveals AIR from JavaScript developer’s perpective. Anyway, to be precise, there are a few words dedicated to Flash/Flex developers, too. Chapter 3 is about Building AIR with Flex Builder and Flash. If you are a JavaScript/HTML developer and new to AIR, this book is what you may need. If you are a Flash/Flex developer, you should consider buying another book, more Flash or Flex developer oriented.

Programming Flex 3: The Comprehensive Guide to Creating Rich Internet Applications with Adobe Flex

Autor: Chafic Kazoun, Joey Lott
Wydawca: www.oreilly.com
Recenzent: Tomasz Wiśniewski
The book Flex 3 Programming does not focus only on Flex Framework programming. It also presents how to configure Flex Builder to Flex. The book contains 22 chapters, which take in a very professional way through the whole process of creating applications. The book is compendium of knowledge about the framework. The Flex 3 Programming explains very well the basics, as well as professional diagrams and helps to fill up the gaps on issues. The issues are prepared very carefully. The chapter 12 Managing State is a good example.. In the book there are only micro examples, it does not focus on the process of building a specific applications, because it was not the intention of authors. In my opinion only Chapter 11 of this book perhaps should be more developed.The book Flex 3 Programming is a bestseller. However, I would not start my journey with Flex with this book. It does not teach programming in Flex, but it will be helpful to fill up the gaps on some issues. This book is for people who want to train and improve the work with Flex projects. Certainly it does not contain the exact solutions that have carried through the process of building applications. I consider the book Flex 3 Programming as very well. Table of contents will tell you whether this book is for you or not.

Growing Software: Proven Strategies for Managing Software Engineers

Autor: Louis Testa
Wydawca: No Starch Press
Recenzent: Krzysztof Satoła
As you all probably know results matter. If you are a development manager in a small, growing company, you will be judged by the work and results of your development team. Your team must deliver quality software on time on budget and that software will have to please your customers.At first this book seems to be like other management books but one thing makes it really different. Growing Software is written for managers working in small companies. In fact it is about managing software engineers in a small firm. Luis Testa shows many interesting aspects of working in small environments as oppossed to corporate ones. In small companies development managers have more influence on processes and workflows and as a result in a product definition. In small companies approaches must be systematic, simple and relatively straighforward. This book is about how to start and avoid common pitfals.

I work as a software architect managing software development team in a small company. For me this book is a nice, well written guide. It is an advice offer about how to succeed when faced with diverse challenges. It is about managing techniques, professional ethics and building relationships with other company’s sections like Marketing or Sales. It also helps to understand and care about relations with other managers, CEO and team members.

As I said earlier there are many good books about managing engineering teams and processes of these teams but this book’s greatest value is focusing on how things work in small companies that want to succeed. I definetely recommend this book especially if you manage an engineering team in a small company.

97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know

Autorzy: Richard Monson-Haefel and others
Wydawca: www.oreilly.com
Recenzent: Krzysztof Satoła
97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know is a book about things which are obvious and every software architect should know, remember and employ. The problem is that most things you can find inside the book are easily forgotten, underestimated and usually not implemented during day-to-day work.The book consists of 97 short essays. Each of them deals with a vital problem software architects often have to face. Although there are great number of brilliant stories in the book I especially like the one titled: You’re Negotiating More Often Than You Think, which is about a project sponsor wanting to cut down expenses. Does it sound familiar to you? Do you know what to do when it happens? The book is a collective work which makes it even more valuable.

Every day in the morning I start my work reading 1-3 essays to keep good practices in my memory and not forget management pitfalls lying in wait for me round the corner. I believe it helps me to become a better software architect. This book is a great and rare opportunity to learn from real experts in the field.

The Art of Agile Development

Autorzy: James Shore, Shane Warden
Wydawca: www.oreilly.com
Recenzent: Krzysztof Satoła
The Art of Agile Development written by James Shore and Shane Warden is about managing a successful eXtreme Programming (XP) team. It reveals many possible ways of leading an agile team through a software project. The book is full of examples, explanations, tips and good practices.Great deal of issues covered in this book would make it hard to read but the authors made a tremendous work organizing the book’s contents. There are cross-links between chapters and topics which help to find solutions to problems. Each topic has uniform structure consisting of subtopics, questions, results, contraindications, alternatives and further reading which helps a lot in finding answers and making decisions during an agile project. I was astonished how much information can be packed on only 400 pages. That is amazing.

Parts I and II of this book contain author’s approach to XP. Part I helps to get started with eXtreme Programming and Part II provides detailed guidance for each of XP’s practices. Part III is full of ideas that can help to understand XP and agile development more deeply.

I have read this book because I had heard that it is worth reading. I work as a software architect and project manager and I found this book very valuable. It is especially useful for anyone who is, will be or wants to be part of an agile team. This also includes programmers, domain experts, testers, project and product managers, designers and business analysts. It may also be handy for aware customers. If you have anything in common with agile development you should read this book.

Adobe AIR 1.5 Cookbook

Autorzy: David Tucker, Marco Casario, Koen De Weggheleire, Rich Tretola
Wydawca: www.oreilly.com
Recenzent: Paweł Sułkowski
As we know Adobe AIR 1.5 Cookbook includes recipes from David Tucker, Rich Tretola, Marco Casario and Koen De Weggheleire. This book is for
intermediate developers who already have a good working knowledge of the Flex tool and ActionScript or JavaScript. Definetely this book helps us to solve many problems because the whole book is full of very useful examples.And now quick summary of what I have found in this book.

Chapters 1, 2, 16, 17 show us how we can make air app in different developing environments (Flex Builder, Flash, Html and JS) and covers most environmental setup tips. Chapter 16 and 17 are about creating app updates (AIR Update Framework), using install badges and whole information needed to distribute air application.

The rest chapters (3-15) explore AIR app – many useful examples of: windows in app, html content, file system, database, network monitoring framework and much more.

The book also contains information that author gives us a bonus online chapter with steps of creating four different mashups
applications with adobe air utilizing the solutions found in this book. In conclusion.. I have waited for this book since the announcement.. and now I can say that it was worth waiting. This book is great. It shows the power of AIR!

AdvancED Flex 3

Autorzy: Elad Elrom, Jack Herrington, Joshua Mostafa, Shashank Tiwari
Wydawca: www.friendsofed.com
Recenzent: Krzysztof Satoła
AdvancED Flex 3 By Elad Elrom, Jack Herrington, Joshua Mostafa, Shashank Tiwari is a very special book dedicated to Flex and AIR developers. Unlike most other Flex and AIR books available on market nowadays this book covers more advanced topics which are of great importance for rich internet applications developers upgrading professional skills from moderate to advance level.I think this book is not ideal. There are things inside I do not like (e.g. no uniform source code convention) or I agree only to some extend.

I am a Flex developer and RIA architect working on software projects. My own experience tells me that multi-tier internet applications can be very complex. It is also very important to develop and deliver the applications on budget and on time which means developers should write clean, working code in an efficient way. This book can help to understand some important architectural and development topics.

Do you know how to successfully leverage architectural and design patterns in your applications? Can you construct advanced and usable components using MXML or ActionScript 3.0? Do you know how to optimize your code to get superior Flash Player performance? What about integrating your application with client- and server-side technologies like Java and PHP? Can your application communicate and interact with JavaScript and HTML? Do you know how to work with Web 2.0 APIs? Can you visualize OLAP data using Flex Charting? If not you should consider buying this book. I did and I do not regret it.

The Essential Guide to Open Source Flash Development

Autorzy: Chris Allen, Wade Arnold, Aral Balkan, Nicolas Cannasse, John Grden, Moses Gunesch, Marc Hughes, R. Jon MacDonald, Andy Zupko
Wydawca: www.friendsofed.com
Recenzent: Krzysztof Satoła
As you probably know, the open source Flash community is mainly gathered around the osflash.org website. The Essential Guide to Open Source Flash Development is a collection of some of the best open source projects that run the whole gamut of the open sourced Flash world. It reveals a lot of detail on how these projects can be integrated into a consistent open source SWF workflow. It is amazing how many things can be done using open source tools. In the next paragraph there is a quick summary of what I have found in the book.Chapter 1 (written by Aral Balkan) introduces the world of open source Flash. In chapter 2, Marc Hughes presents a brief introduction to some of the open source tools that are available. Many of them are presented in the book. Chapter 3 (Marc Hughes) covers installing and setting the open source tools necessary for Flash development. Chapter 4 (Marc Hughes) is about working with designers and other people using the open source workflow which was configured in chapter 3. In chapter 5 (Marc Hughes) you can find a nice introduction to testing and debugging ActionScript 2 and 3 projects using AsUnit, FlexUnit and Xray. First two provide a framework for unit testing. Xray provides a mechanism for logging and runtime inspection of SWF files. Chapter 6 (Marc Hughes) is devoted to embeding Flash-based applications in HTML pages as well as following best practices for organizing and deploying web content. In chapter 7, Wade Arnold explores AMFPHP, an open source gateway for easily connecting a Flash player-based application to PHP. While reading chapter 8 (R.Jon MacDonald) we learn about SWX, the native data format for the Flash Platform which is of great importance especially for Flash Lite developers. In chapter 9, Nicolas Cannasse talks about haXe, a high-level programming language for web development. In chapter 10, Moses Gunesch talks about Fuse and GoASAP, two open source ActionScript (2.0 and 3.0) libraries for coding animations. Chapter 11 is all about Papervision3D. Andy Zupko shows there how to configure and use this great open source ActionScript 3D environment. Chapters 12 and 13 are devoted to Red5 (Chris Allen, John Grden), an open source Java-based server which supports audio and video streaming. As you can see there is a lof of versatile stuff inside this book.

This book is awesome. It opens to the reader amazing world of the open source Flash treasures. It shows how to prepare and use a powerfull, useful and personalized Flash-based programming environment for free. It gives also a great opportunity to start being a part of the open source Flash community and maybe to start contributing. If you use commercial tools like Adobe Flash you can also benefit from this book by learning about internals and variety of solutions available for aware developers. I have learnt about many interesting open source tools I now use alongside commercial ones. One such a tool is ant. Another is FlexUnit to name just a few. I cannot live without them now. To sum it up, I have waited for such a book for a long time and now, when it is available, it is definitely worth buing and reading.

Creating Mashups with Adobe Flex and AIR

Autorzy: John Crosby, David Hassoun, Chris Korhonen
Wydawca: www.friendsofed.com
Recenzent: Marcin Klimek
Creating mashups with Adobe Flex and Air book perfectly fits nowadays internet reality. It presents process of developing mashups, applications based on many different external data resources. With external services like google maps, flickr or youtube there is possibility to achieve great functionality in very easy way. Developing that functionality from the ground would take a lot of time and money. Book contains many practical examples of use APIs in mashup applications. It include interesting comparison of web and desktop technologies witch can help to choose the one that is best for particular project. You will also find many additional information about Adobe Flex and AIR like debugging or performance profiling. If you want to create most powerful web and desktop applications this book is for you.

Learning ActionScript 3.0 – The Non-Programmer’s Guide to ActionScript 3.0

Autorzy: Rich Shupe, Zevan Rosser
Wydawca: www.friendsofed.com
Recenzent: Michał Skawiańczyk
If you are someone who starts your adventure with actionscript or you are migrating from older version, like me, this is a perfect opportunity to learn AS 3.0. The authors give a very detailed description of this language. Starting from the basic programming like to be skipped if you are already familiar with it, you will quickly end up as an intermediate actionscript developer. The book explains the concepts of OOP in a very comprehensive language, and gives just the right amount of information. I strongly recommend this book to all of you!

Creating Mashups with Adobe Flex and AIR

Autorzy: John Crosby, David Hassoun, Chris Korhonen
Wydawca: www.friendsofed.com
Recenzent: Krzysztof Satoła
Creating Mashups with Adobe Flex and AIR is a book full of mashup examples. Mashups are applications that combine information from more than one source into a single application. Adobe Flex and Adobe AIR provide a solid platform that enables us, developers, to quickly and quite easily build mashup applications. You can embed Google, Flickr, Twitter, Amazon and more services into your code and the possibilities you have with mashups are endless. I have always been curious how to do things like that. How to get to know what to do to make use of existing third party services, APIs or RSSs in my applications. That is amazing but I have finally found the answer reading this excellent book. If you are curious how all those guys do that mashup things you should read this book, too.

AdvancED Flex Application Development: Building Rich Media X

Autorzy: R Blank, Chris Charlton, Omar Gonzalez, Hasan Otuome
Wydawca: www.friendsofed.com
Recenzent: Krzysztof Satoła
AdvancED Flex Application Development: Building Rich Media X is about how guys at Almer/Blank used Flex, along with other open source technologies, to help create a great application, the Rich Media Exchange (RMX). In this book you can extend your Flex knowledge and learn some of the techniques, code and planning that goes into building an advanaced Flex application.For me, as a Flex developer, this book is a mine full of precious tips and ideas which I can use in my daily routine. This book is different than most other Flex books. It starts where other books end. It is about things you may not find in Flex Help. This book describes the whole process of creating a sophisticated rich internet application (RIA) and this description is of great value for both less and more advanced developers. If you are a web developer it is a book you should be acquainted with. I definitely recommend this book.

Adobe Flex 3: Training from the Source

Autorzy: Jeff Tapper, Michael Labriola, Matthew Boles, James Talbot
Wydawca: www.peachpit.com
Recenzent: Krzysztof Satoła
Adobe Flex 3: Training from the Source is an update to the extremely popular Adobe Flex 2: Training from the Source. Authors of the book not only revised the earlier version of the book but also added a few chapters on features such modules, the Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR), and the advanced DataGrid component.If you are new to Flex 3, this book will guide you through the process of developing a complete application (an online grocery store) using Adobe Flex Builder 3. This book provides you with all the tools you need to get started. But be aware that to make the most of this book, you should at the very least understand basic web terminology. This book is written assuming that you are comfortable working with other programming languages such as Java, .Net, PHP or ColdFusion. This knowledge let you better understand many comparisons and analogies made to server-side web programming.

If you are more advanced Flex developer you can still find this book compelling. You will especially like to focus on new Flex 3 topics which are discussed in this book. There are many places inside “old chapters” which were updated or extended to reflect changes and improvements available in Adobe Flex 3.

I am a Flex Developer. Although I have read the Adobe Flex 2: Training from the Source book I have also read Adobe Flex 3 version of the book and I do not regret it. It has been worth spending my time on reading. I especially liked new parts on creating modular applications and profiling Flex applications.

If you learn best by doing, this is the book you need. I definitely recommend this book.

ActionScript 3.0 Design Patterns

Autorzy: Willam Sanders & Chandima Cumaranatunge
Wydawca: www.oreilly.com
Recenzent: Michał Czaicki
If you want to build realy big apps in AS, you definitly make friends with design patterns. And thats why this book was created. It covers all of most helpful design patterns you would need in developing AS applications.Patterns are grouped, depending on their type, and this is very good move, cause we can very easy find pattern which we need.

Groups used in book:1. Creational Patterns (Factory Method Pattern, Singleton Pattern)2. Structural Patterns (Decorator Pattern, Adapter Pattern, Coposite Pattern)3. Behavioral Patterns (Command Pattern, Observer Pattern, Template Metod Pattern, State Pattern, Strategy Pattern)4. Multiple Patterns (MVC Pattern, Symetric Proxy Pattern)

All patterns are realy good described. This is not theorycrafting book, apart from theory, there are always one or two examples.

For me the best thing is that you can go throught the book, read (and understand!) introduction of every pattern, maybe some examples, and when you will be developing this BIG_APP, and when you will find a place for one of the patterns, you can easily find it and include in your project.

Of course book is not perfect – somethimes provided examples are too easy to fully show potential of pattern, and reader can misunderstand benefits of using it. Even so, this book is must have for people who don’t know design patterns, and want to develop realy good applications in ActionScript 3.0.

ActionScript 3.0 Cookbook

Autorzy: Joey Lott, Darron Schall, Keith Peters
Wydawca: www.oreilly.com
Recenzent: Tomasz Wiśniewski
Cookbook describes many subjects related to ActionScript. Book has very interesting form with chapters in not accidentally order. It starts with basics of programming, and then other topics which will give you the complex knowledge about ActionScript. Author is not getting into routine. In the table of contents you’ll find specific tasks. Similar, when you trying to pass a practical exam. In one sentence the whole task. Which can have a different length and are divided in to a Problem, Solution, Discussion and See Also. The main advantage of this book is their form. Tasks can be very standard for example Using Mathematical Operators and less standard like Simulating Dice. Cookbook is not ordinary textbook to ActionScript 3.0 but it is a collection of typical and not typical solutions which can be found using this programming language. It would be useful to know the task’s level of difficulty especially for beginner users. Sometimes we do not want to get knowledge about for example XML but only we try to solve the problem in a few minutes and this book exactly enables to do this.Cookbook presents wonderful balance between form and contents. The chapter Web Services and Flash Remoting is worth mentioning. This book can be recommended to people who have to solve specific tasks.

Essential ActionScript 3.0

Autor: Colin Moock
Wydawca: www.oreilly.com
Recenzent: Marcin Klimek
Colin Moock’s book entitled “Essential ActionScript 3.0″ pretend to be one of the most important positions in ActionScript developer library. It contains a lot of informations from core concept of object oriented programing to details about garbage collection or topics connected with optimalization of ActionScript code. Many additional annotations provide unique ActionScript knowledge. The book is divided into three parts.First part contains most basic and most important information about object oriented programming and syntax of Actionscript 3.0. This section is useful especially for beginners. You can find a lot of well described samples. Thanks to many information about internal mechanisms working in Flash, sections can by very useful for advanced programers.

Second Part of the book covers a lot of interestig information related to visual part of ActionScript application. It shows how to build GUI and let it play with user gestures. You can learn about tools to build rich and interactive interface in the best and the most flexible way.

Third part contain applied ActionScript topics. It should be very interesting for person who want to find out how to create content in Flash authoring environment and bring it to life with code written in ActionScript. This section covers basic Flex MXML concept also.

Summing up this book contains most important concepts of ActionScript language. Nowadays, when internet becoming more and more, interactive, useful and eye-candy this book will help you understand how to build amazing content using one of most powerful environment dedicated to internet solutions.

Flex Solutions: Essential Techniques for Flex 2 and 3 Developers

Autor: Marco Casario
Wydawca: www.friendsofed.com
Recenzent: Krzysztof Satoła
‘Flex Solutions: Essential Techniques for Flex 2 and 3 Developers’ by Marco Casario is a must have book. Why? Many simple, objective code snippets from which one can build many useful Flex applications. The simplicity of code examples can be also easily extended in real projects. The book is devided into problem oriented parts: Flex Basics, Using Components, Working with Data, Validating and Formatting Data, Managing Complex Data, Working with Remote Data, Compiling and Deploying Flex Applications, Designing and Programming the Look and Feel of Flex Applications, Flex Security and more. Each chapter consists of number of problems which are completely solved.Marco, as it can be read in About the Author note, has been passionate about Informatics since he was a child. I have realized that fact during reading the Flex Solutions book. I have used code examples from the book in my Flex projects and doing so let me save time on looking for solutions in other sources.

If you want to learn more about Flex, this book is for you. If you look for a book with quick-fire solutions to common problems and best practice techniques, this book is for you. If you want to improve your Flex skills for Rich Internet Application development, this book is for you. And if you do not know Flex but want to learn what can be done with it and how, just guess: this book is also for you. I like very much problem solving approach in learning and therefore I recommend this book.

Essential ActionScript 3.0

Autor: Colin Moock
Wydawca: www.oreilly.com
Recenzent: Piotr Bęben
The “Essential ActionScript 3.0″ book is addressed to everybody who wants to known new possibilities of ActionScript 3. This book helps you migrate without problems from version 2 to 3 and extends your knowledge. Many small and simple examples illustrate and introduce theoretical problems in a simple way. It is written in a simple language without technical gibber. In my opinion every Flash developer should read this book minimum two times.

Programming Flex 2: The comprehensive guide to creating rich media applications with Adobe Flex

Autorzy: Chafic Kazoun, Joey Lott
Wydawca: www.oreilly.com
Recenzent: Krzysztof Satoła
‘Programming Flex 2: The comprehensive guide to creating rich media applications with Adobe Flex’ is a great book for more advanced Flex developers. This book covers many important topics like working with UI components, advanced component concepts, working with media and data, client and remote data communication just to name the few. The authors, Chafic Kazoun and Joey Lott, are very experienced long-time Flash developers. They are well known in the Flash community, and are among the elite of the Flash development world. Chafic and Joey has been using Flex for a long time and it can be noticed by reader during reading this book which is full of practical leads.This book is intended for anyone looking to learn more about Flex 2. The authors recognize that the audience for this book represents a very diverse group of people with many different backgrounds. In my opinion this book is a great resource but not for the beginners. Lots of original ActionScript and MXML code examples help reader to look deeper inside Flex 2 internals. I definitely recommend this book!