Available now: The Flash Facebook Cookbook

It’s official: my first book for Flash Platform developers is now finished and available to buy (or simply download); and it’s called the “Flash Facebook Cookbook”.

In the event that the title doesn’t give it away, this is all about working with Facebook from the Flash Platform (which covers both the Flash Player and AIR applications). It’s formatted recipe style, with a motley collection of self-contained recipes that demonstrate some of what you can do with Flash and Facebook combined.

Who is it for? Well, it’s written with the assumption that you’re at least a little familiar with Flash Builder and the Flex framework - that way, we don’t have to waste too much on building user interfaces. If you’re more used to using other IDE’s like FDT, Intellij or FlashDevelop that’s not a problem, we just tend to throw an interface together with MXML and wire it up with ActionScript. You could even work with Flash Professional if you like - the important stuff is all in the ActionScript, after all.

As for the writing itself, it’s much more than just a set of recipes - or so I hope - as I’ve tried to include more than just the solution, but also the reasons and the theory behind the different facets of working with Facebook. It might be a long read, cover-to-cover, but the idea is that when you’ve done so you’ll know Facebook just as well as you would if you’d had to figure it all out for yourself, from scratch.

You can either buy the printed version of the Cookbook or the download the eBook version, direct from Packt Publishing website or from Amazon.com/.co.uk. A sample chapter is also available from the Packt website, and I’m currently putting the finishing touches to the accompanying Facebook App.

Needless to say, go buy it, and let me know what you think!