As a newbie (and I'm still one) we face the problem of too much advice and having to decide just which do we trust.
And that's hard.
But then ... beer is forgiving, we learn by doing and making mistakes, and mistakes are drinkable.
So what *do* we know? we do know that many, many, many people brew amber ale for weeks in a primary without issue and that if you *do* transfer "just before" fermentation is done you want to make sure that fermentation is "just about done". I'd really err on the later rather than sooner, if I were you.
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As an "experienced newbie", I'd take take ACbrewer's advice. From my weeks/months of reading posts and banging my head trying figure out just how everything fits together and then finally boiling together a coherent "general picture", his advice here just "snaps in" perfectly.
I'm still a bit iffy about the phrase "just before fermentation is done" but my interpretation is that primary fermentation (in the first 4 to 7) days is a wild and tumoltuous time but tapers off to near but not total dormancy as the sugar is more or less completely consumed. Then the beer goes into a "clearing up stage" where fermentation is for all intents and purposes done but potentially there are still a minute amount of yeasties needing to settle down. So my take is this simply means "after the primary violent firmentation has stopped but before the settling down has begun in earnest".
Then again, I wouldn't secondary. It seems too hard and too many people with first hand knowledge tell me you don't need to.
But on the third hand, I'd be really eager to get it into that glass carboy where I can watch it.
Then on the fourth and final hand, I'd trust that no harm can really come from transferring late whereas some (but not a lot) can come of transferring early so I'd take ACbrewer's advice.