Make cool stuff. If you're a designer or artist without a lot of programming experience, this book will teach you to work with 2D and 3D graphics, sound, physical interaction, and electronic circuitry to create all sorts of interesting and compelling experiences -- online and off.

Programming Interactivity explains programming and electrical engineering basics, and introduces three freely available tools created specifically for artists and designers:

• Processing, a Java-based programming language and environment for building projects on the desktop, Web, or mobile phones
• Arduino, a system that integrates a microcomputer prototyping board, IDE, and programming language for creating your own hardware and controls
• OpenFrameworks, a coding framework simplified for designers and artists, using the powerful C++ programming language

BTW, you don't have to wait until you finish the book to actually make something. You'll get working code samples you can use right away, along with the background and technical information you need to design, program, build, and troubleshoot your own projects. The cutting edge design techniques and discussions with leading artists and designers will give you the tools and inspiration to let your imagination take flight.

The best way to showcase a powerful new technology is to demonstrate its real-world results, and that's exactly what this new Cookbook does with Adobe Flex 3.

Wide ranging and highly practical, Flex 3 Cookbook contains more than 300 proven recipes for developing interactive Rich Internet Applications and Web 2.0 sites. You'll find everything from Flex basics, to solutions for working with visual components and data access, to tips on application development, unit testing, and using Adobe AIR.

You also get ideas from the development community. Through its Flex Cookbook website (www.adobe.com/devnet/), Adobe invited Flex developers to post their own solutions for working with this technology, and from hundreds of posts, the authors chose the best and most useful solutions to supplement Flex 3 Cookbook.

Each recipe inside provides a solution to a common problem, explains how and why it works, and offers sample code that you can put to use immediately. Topics include:

• Containers and dialogues
• Working with Text
• Data driven components
• DataGrid and Advanced DataGrid
• ItemRenderers and Editors
• Images, bitmaps, videos, and sounds
• CSS, styling, and skinning
• States and effects
• Working with Collections, arrays, and DataProviders
• Using DataBinding
• Validation, formatting, and regular expressions
• Using Charts and data visualization
• Services and Data Access
• Using RSLs and Modules
• Working with Adobe AIR

Whether you're a committed Flex developer or still evaluating the technology, you'll discover how to get quick results with Flex 3 using the recipes in this Cookbook. It's an ideal way to jumpstart your next web application.