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

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #185604 in Books
• Published on: 2006-11-16
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

From the Back Cover
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.

Customer Reviews

Excellent, whatever you use Actionscript for.
I found this to be an excellent book on design patterns for Actionscripters. If you could follow the pattern examples in Essential Actionscript 2.0 then this is the logical place to go next. Despite being relatively slim, it is densely written with no waffle or padding. It covers an enormous amount of material, and the authors' practical experience at Actionscript coding on real projects shines through. The way the book selects the most useful patterns for Actionscript projects, and doesn't cover irrelevant patterns such as Observer is great. The sections on Unit Testing, Events, E4X, Regular Expressions and loading external data are an unexpected bonus. The book is broad enough to help anyone working with Actionscript, from Flex RIA programmers to people writing Flash games.

For a book with a cover price of 32GBP, there are a few quibbles that nearly caused me to knock off a star. There are minor problems with some of the program listings given in the book (e.g. page 50). The website that accompanies the book is very poor, and it contains no Errata or corrected listings for the major Proximity example. There are also minor typographical errors with the program listings - for instance minus sign is sometimes rendered as an em dash and sometimes as a minus sign within the same listing (e.g. page 61). Simply getting someone to follow the book through and enter the listings would have solved all of these problems. I also wasn't too impressed with their explanation of Facade or Adapter.

However, despite this I think this is one of the best books on Actionscript I have read, and it has proved as valuable to me in my work as those by Colin Moock.

Great for AS3 and great for Design Patterns
This book contains many very well written examples of Design Patterns. It contains many of the lesser known patterns and would be a great book to both the new and experienced AS3 developer.

I would recommend this book to all levels of AS3 developers.