Advanced ActionScript 3 with Design Patterns (Paperback)

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Key Phrases: template method, abstract method, public function reset, Flash Player, Flash Remoting, Factory Method (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Today's ActionScript-based applications require increasingly sophisticated architectures and code. This book aids intermediate and advanced ActionScript developers in  learning how to plan and build applications more effectively. You'll learn how to apply design patterns as solutions to common programming scenarios. Beyond a reference, Advanced ActionScript with Design Patterns is a practical guide complete with sample mini-applications illustrating each design pattern.

Table of Contents:

Part I - Successful Projects
1. How to Design Applications
   
2. Programming to Interfaces
   
Part II - Patterns

3. MVC
   
4. Singleton
   
5. Factory (Abstract Factory and Factory Method)
   
6. Proxy
   
7. Iterator
   
8. Composite
   
9. Decorator
   
10. Command
   
11. Memento
   
12. State
   
Part III - Advanced ActionScript Topics

13. Working with Events
   
14. Sending and Loading Data
   
15. E4X (XML)
   
16. Regular Expressions

About the Author

Joey Lott works with ActionScript during the day and by night he's a super-secret international man of mystery, rescuing animals and children from harms way, righting wrongs, and working for global peace, the rights of all living beings, and environmental responsibility. Joey is the author (or co-author) of a veritable arsenal of ActionScript and Flash-related titles, including the ActionScript Cookbook, Programming Flash Communication Server, and the Flash 8 Cookbook. In his free time he likes to write poetry, pursue competitive origami, and train in the art of aikido. Danny Patterson is a Consultant specializing in Flash and Web technologies. He also works with Schematic as a Senior Flash Architect. He is an Adobe Community Expert and has contributed over 40 articles to Community MX and the MX Developers Journal. He is also the co-author of the Flash 8 ActionScript: Training from the Source book by Adobe Press. He has spoken at many conferences and user groups including Flash in the Can and Flash Belt. Danny is certified in both Flash and ColdFusion and has worked on web projects for many large companies including Microsoft, IBM, Dell, Adobe and Starz. You can check out his blog at DannyPatterson.com.

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Adobe Press; 1 edition (November 12, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0321426568
• ISBN-13: 978-0321426567
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.9 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #36,828 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

63 of 77 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Recommended, but..., December 27, 2006

By	R. Grimes (Sandy, Utah USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is a book that I would classify as a "should have" for any Flash/Flex developer that uses ActionScript 3 and for whom OOD/OOP is important. If you could care less about incorporating OOD/OOP into your web applications, then you can pass on this one.

There is, in my opinion, a major shortcoming in this book. In presenting the MVC (Model, View, Controller), the "View" classes are presented as classes that extend the Sprite class, in which the author draws the objects via ActionScript. Unfortunately, the author seems to ignore the fact that most developers, who employ Flex to build their web apps, will use MXML to layout the view. In such cases, there are no examples of how the author would design the view and controller classes so as to follow a proper MVC design pattern. The same would be true for Flash developers as most are not going to draw the entire screen of their web apps via ActionScript. As a consequence, I feel that most people who read this book will not successfully implement these design patterns into their Flex web apps unless they have prior OOD/OOP experience. In either case (with or without OOD/OOP experience), only the most determined web developers will be able to translate the design patterns of this book in a meaningful way within their applications. This above-mentioned shortcoming is carried throughout the book.

While I realize the title of the book is "Advanced ActionScript 3...", and the argument can be made that the content was only meant to address pure ActionScript 3 concepts, it still ignores the fact that most developers will not develop their web applications with "only" ActionScript 3 and absent any MXML document to define their screen layout. As such, this becomes all but useless in promoting the increase use of the design patterns being presented.

Ron

29 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The real deal, March 19, 2007

By	George D. Girton (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The design patterns movement, the beginnings of which can be traced to Gamma, Helm, Johnson and Vlissides famous Design Patterns book, has informed and changed software development, and spawned a raft of books and study groups.

That's right, people actually get together, read these books one chapter at a time, and talk about software design patterns - for fun! (I admit to being one of them). So, Joey Lott and Danny Patterson are taking on a real challenge in writing a book on this topic, and the term "advanced" in the title is well-advised.

The first chapter is not about patterns but pretty basic object oriented stuff: inheritance vs. composition, polymorphism, code conventions, design first then write unit tests first. These topics are standard fare for a book of this type, and the chapter is blessedly succinct.

The second chapter is on programming to interfaces, a fundamental idea of great importance. Lott and Patterson give one of the clearest explanations I have read of the advantages, and give a convincing argument for always programming to interfaces even when you are using inheritance. Dude! Actionscript3 has interfaces!

Then you get the chapters on patterns: Model/View/Controller, Singleton, Factory/Template, Proxy, Iterator, Composite, Decorator, Command, Memento, and State. I guarantee that after you have read these chapters and studied the code, you will understand these patterns a lot better than before, and will have ideas on how to use them.

The book is rounded out with entire chapters on Events (everything you always wanted to know but were afraid you wouldn't understand why), sending and loading data, E4X, and RegEx.

I have only a couple of minor cavils about the book. It would have been SO EASY to include the compilation command line.

/flex_sdk_2/bin/mxmlc MyProgram.as

See? Now you can compile for free! The book doesn't give you info on command line tools, but assumes you have downloaded and installed the 30-day flex compiler. And in the wonderfully worked out and fully crafted source code which you can download from the publisher's website, once again I was left scratching my head, when it said you have to set the source path to the library. Thanks very much, but tell me how?

It is not possible to have a useful book of this type without showing substantial amount of source for real projects, and fortunately, here Lott and Patterson really deliver. The projects are not on the level of usefulness of Phillip Kerman's book on Flash 8 at work, but they are complete enough to illustrate the patterns. All source is in 100 percent Actionscript 3, with no Flex component source; since the book is not about Flex I consider this to be an advantage. At any rate, this book communicates the usefulness, as well as the nuts and bolts, of some fundamental software design patterns, several of which I have already used, and others which I will use soon.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best ActionScript books out there...., January 7, 2007

By	Ryan Taylor (Atlanta, GA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I picked this book up to have something to read during my Christmas vacation and read it front to back in one week. This is definitely one of the better ActionScript books out there.

First off, if you don't already understand basic object-oriented concepts such as polymorphism, encapsulation, how and why to build a class, etc., then this book isn't for you. I recommend starting with either 'Essential ActionScript 2.0' or 'Object-Oriented ActionScript for Flash 8' and getting comfortable with object-oriented development before moving on to this book.

Having said that, this book is great for advanced users. A lot of the design patterns and concepts were review for me, however there's a good chance there are at least a few design patterns that you aren't already familiar with in this book. I also really like the fact that this book emphasizes composition over inheritance; that's a concept that a lot of books don't stress properly. Also noteworthy is their emphasis on programming to interfaces, except when an abstract class is more applicable. The examples in this book are all written in ActionScript 3.0, however the concepts taught apply to ActionScript 2.0 as well, so even if you aren't ready to learn ActionScript 3.0, this is still a great read.

I did find quite a few mistakes in this book, mostly class names and constructors not matching up, or refrences to a class in text, then the example using a different class name. If you are smart enough to be reading an advanced book like this, then the mistakes should be easily caught and not confuse you at all.

Overall, the guys from Schematic delivered a great book. There is plenty of great material inside, even for the advanced reader. Highly recommended.