Acknowledgments

This book would not have been possible if not for the hard work of many people.

We’d like to thank everyone at Manning, especially Marjan Bace and Michael Stephens, for giving us the opportunity to write—and rewrite—the book. Without the hard work and dedication of our development editors, Nermina Pascal-Miller and Sebastian Stirling, this book would not have happened. Thanks for your guidance and encouragement. Thanks to Karen Tegtmeyer, our review editor, for arranging the peer reviews and to Stephen Hong, for helping to market and promote the book. The rest of Manning’s staff was patient and supportive and provided us with invaluable assistance to help make this book a success, in particular our copyeditor Betsey Henkels and our proofreader Elizabeth Martin.

Special thanks go to Richard Dammkoehler for doing such an excellent job in his technical review of the final manuscript shortly before it went to press.

We’d also like to express our thanks to Michael Kimsal for publishing a two-part article based on the Grails chapter of this book in the excellent GroovyMag.

Thank you to Matt Raible for giving us AppFuse, which allowed us to build a sample application in just one short chapter, and for promoting our book in his travels.

Thanks to the Adobe team for giving the Flex framework, BlazeDS, and more to the open source community.

Thanks to Marvin Froeder (also known as Velo) for his hard work in developing the FlexMojos Maven plugin, which we use extensively throughout the book.

Thank you to Giacomo “Peldi” Guilizzoni, founder of the outstanding Balsamiq Mockups tool (a fine example of an Adobe AIR application) for providing us with licenses. Many of the mockups you see as illustrations throughout this book were created using this tool.

Thanks to the following reviewers who read the manuscript at different stages of its development and contributed invaluable feedback: Jeremy Flowers, Sopan Shewale, Rick Evans, Christophe Bunn, Phil Hanna, Nikolaos Kaintantzis, John Griffin, Doug Warren, Brian Curnow, and Peter Pavlovich. Thanks also to everyone who contributed on the MEAP forum.

Last but not least, thank you to James Ward for contributing the foreword to our book.

Jeremy Anderson

I’d like to thank God for blessing me with the talent necessary to write this book.

Second only to God is my wife Karla, who had the patience to see me through this and keep me on task. To my children, Emily and Isaac, thanks for allowing Daddy to hide in his basement office to write. Without their support, understanding, and sacrifice, this book would not have been possible.

Next, big thanks to my coauthor and partner in crime, BJ. If he hadn’t joined me on this venture, there might not have been a Flex on Java.

Thanks to everyone at Pillar Technology, especially Gary Gentry, Bob Meyers, Chris Beale, Patrick Welsh, Matt VanVleet, Rich Dammkoehler—and everyone else who provided support.

Thank you to Carl Erickson and everyone at Atomic Object for helping me solidify my interpretation of the Passive View pattern in the sample application.

BJ Allmon

Thanks to my God and Father in heaven who is the author of life. Your love endures forever.

I’m humbled by the patience and the love demonstrated to me by my wonderful bride Sarah and our kids Hannah, Zacharee, Elliot, and Jennessee. Thank you for allowing me to steal precious time away to work on this book. I love you so much!

Without my coauthor Jeremy Anderson’s talent and thoughtfulness, I wouldn’t have been able to contribute to this project. Thank you Jeremy for your hard work in leading this project!

Others who have helped me along in my journey include Bob Myers, Christopher Judd, Kevin Smith, Charlie Close, Gary Gentry, Richard Dammkoehler, Matt VanVleet, Randy Thomas, and Dan Wiebe; the many talented developers at Pillar Technology Group including Mark Flickinger, Ankur Gupta, Beth Seabloom, and Shawn Steinbrunner; the wonderful staff at Mettler-Toledo; the entire staff at Click4Care; the Delaware City Vineyard, Vineyard Church Delaware County, Vineyard Columbus; and my extended family.