Let
$G$ be a graph. The minimum number of colors needed to color the edges of
$G$ is called the chromatic index of
$G$ and is denoted by
$X'\left( G \right)$. It is well known that
$\Delta \left( G \right)\,\le \,\mathcal{X}'\left( G \right)\,\le \Delta \left( G \right)\,+\,1$, for any graph
$G$, where
$\Delta \left( G \right)$ denotes the maximum degree of
$G$. A graph
$G$ is said to be class 1 if
${\mathcal{X}}'\left( G \right)\,=\,\Delta \left( G \right)$ and class 2 if
${\mathcal{X}}'\left( G \right)\,=\,\Delta \left( G \right)\,+\,1$. Also,
${{G}_{\Delta }}$ is the induced subgraph on all vertices of degree
$\Delta \left( G \right)$. Let
$f:\,V\left( G \right)\,\to \mathbb{N}$ be a function. An
$f$ -coloring of a graph
$G$ is a coloring of the edges of
$E\left( G \right)$ such that each color appears at each vertex
$v\,\in \,V\left( G \right)$ at most
$f\left( v \right)$ times. The minimum number of colors needed to
$f$ -color
$G$ is called the
$f$ -chromatic index of
$G$ and is denoted by
${{{\mathcal{X}}'}_{f}}\left( G \right)$. It was shown that for every graph
$G,\,{{\Delta }_{f}}\,\left( G \right)\,\le \,{{\mathcal{X}}^{\prime }}_{f}\left( G \right)\,\le \,{{\Delta }_{f}}\,\left( G \right)\,+\,1$, where
${{\Delta }_{f}}\left( G \right)\,=\,{{\max }_{v\in \left( G \right)}}\,\left\lceil {{{d}_{G}}\left( v \right)}/{f\left( v \right)}\; \right\rceil $. A graph
$G$ is said to be
$f$ -class 1 if
${{\mathcal{X}}^{\prime }}_{f}\left( G \right)\,=\,{{\Delta }_{f}}\left( G \right)$, and
$f$ -class 2, otherwise. Also,
${{G}_{{{\Delta }_{f}}}}$ is the induced subgraph of
$G$ on
$\left\{ v\,\in \,V\left( G \right)\,:\,{{{d}_{G}}\left( V \right)}/{f\left( v \right)}\;\,=\,{{\Delta }_{f}}\left( G \right) \right\}$. Hilton and Zhao showed that if
${{G}_{\Delta }}$ has maximum degree two and
$G$ is class 2, then
$G$ is critical,
${{G}_{\Delta }}$ is a disjoint union of cycles and
$\delta \left( G \right)\,=\,\Delta \left( G \right)-1$, where
$\delta \left( G \right)$ denotes the minimum degree of
$G$, respectively. In this paper, we generalize this theorem to
$f$ -coloring of graphs. Also, we determine the
$f$ -chromatic index of a connected graph
$G$ with
$\left| {{G}_{{{\Delta }_{f}}}} \right|\,\le \,4$.