 See larger picture | Advanced ActionScript 3 with Design Patterns
by
Joey Lott and Danny Patterson
- Adobe PressList Price: $49.99
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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
Featured Customer Reviews  More than just an actionscript book,
December 19, 2008
I saw a lot of postive reviews for this book so I thought I would give it a try. It is definitely written by programmers, due to the fact that everything is class and object oriented - which is what I wanted.
I have read a few different actionscript books, and this one is the most in depth and complex one I have ever read. While most other actionscript books stop at giving basic functionality of classes, packages, and designing programs, this book really focuses in on the design and analysis aspect. It really gives a lot of thought and explanation as to "why" things are done.
This title definitely earns the title "advanced" in my book. While that might sound scary, it really isn't meant to deter people that understand how object oriented programming works.
I have read about half of the book so far, and what I have gotten the most information about is when and why to use certain classes, designing interfaces, and creating scalable, flexible project from the ground up.
In all of the examples on the patterns, it really explains why and how important encapsulation and modularity are when designing larger programs.
Bottom line: For wanting to learn more about OOP and desiging flexible applications, this is a great book. I have a much better understanding of the relationships between classes. Knowing how to design and develop larger applications can save hours.Great book for understanding advanced OO concepts,
December 11, 2008 A great book for understanding advanced OO concepts. My only complaint is that it deals only with AS. I would like it if it also had examples using MXML, for the full Flash experience.
Very Readable, Lots of Examples,
October 20, 2008 This is a very accessible and friendly book. I found it much more manageable than Joey Lott's Actionscript 3.0 Cookbook. Its objective is to illustrate the most useful "design patterns"--i.e., ways of approaching and outlining your project. The examples themselves can serve as reusable templates for your own projects, and that's the main point of the book.excellent concise info on AS3,
June 06, 2008 I realize the book title (and the focus and organization) is about design patterns, but I thought it was worth adding the fact that--for me at least--it's the one book I keep coming back to for great lucent coverage of really key AS3 concepts including event dispatching (and using IEventDispatcher instead). I mean, Colin's Essential AS3 is one to turn to for definitive answers on sub-atomic (and important) details... but I still keep coming back to Danny and Joey's book because it's so direct and to the point. To really learn a subject you need more than a book--but to go back over things... to get a good skeleton starter script (which doesn't have extra baggage)... and for brief clear explanations, this book really does it. It's by no means a dated book either. I just think some people might pass over this book because the title makes it sound like it just covers design patterns when, in fact, it's just a great AS3 book. Good Introduction to Design Patterns,
February 19, 2008 If you are interested in improving your code to be more maintainable, flexible and gaining a better understanding of Object Oriented Programming (OOP) this is a good book to have. The core concepts are explained in readable language and the code examples are for the most part well-written.
I did notice one criticism of another reviewer is that the book did not address Flex UI components or MXML. Flex is certainly beyond the scope of this book and there are many excellent books on Flex 2+ that will better explain the concepts of programming in Flex. This book is about ActionScript 3 and so it mainly addresses the classes available in the flash package. That does not mean that you cannot apply the concepts from this book to a Flex application however Cairngorm and PureMVC are the patterns most Flex developers gravitate towards and so they would be a better starting point for someone interested in that development platform. For those patterns a developer would likely find the internet to be the best resource for tutorials and information however both of those design patterns are based on core concepts explained in detail in this book so it can give you greater understanding and make the learning process easier.
Even if Flex is your primary area of interest this book can help with understanding many of the underlying core concepts of programming in ActionScript 3 and given the right understanding you can create a Flex application with little or no MXML.
The section on events is worth purchasing the book. It is well-written and is one of the better if not best explanations on the subject as has been pointed out in other reviews.
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