ActionScript 3.0 Design Patterns
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| |||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £5.20
Trade in ActionScript 3.0 Design Patterns: Object Oriented Programming Techniques (Adobe Developer Library) for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £5.20, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Authors
Discover books, learn about writers, and more.
Product Description
Product Description
Now that ActionScript is reengineered from top to bottom as a true object-oriented programming (OOP) language, reusable design patterns are an ideal way to solve common problems in Flash and Flex applications. If you're an experienced Flash or Flex developer ready to tackle sophisticated programming techniques with ActionScript 3.0, this hands-on introduction to design patterns is the book you need.
ActionScript 3.0 Design Patterns takes you step by step through the process, first by explaining how design patterns provide a clear road map for structuring code that actually makes OOP languages easier to learn and use. You then learn about various types of design patterns and construct small abstract examples before trying your hand at building full-fledged working applications outlined in the book. Topics in ActionScript 3.0 Design Patterns include:
- Key features of ActionScript 3.0 and why it became an OOP language
- OOP characteristics, such as classes, abstraction, inheritance, and polymorphism
- The benefits of using design patterns
- Creational patterns, including Factory and Singleton patterns
- Structural patterns, including Decorator, Adapter, and Composite patterns
- Behavioral patterns, including Command, Observer, Strategy, and State patterns
- Multiple design patterns, including Model-View-Controller and Symmetric Proxy designs
About the Author
Dr. William Sanders is a Professor of Interactive Information Technology at the University of Hartford. He teaches courses in Flash, ActionScript, Flash Media Server, PHP, C#, SQL, and XHTML among other Internet languages. He has published 44 computer and computer-related books, written software ranging from Basic to Flash Media Server ActionScript and served as a consultant for different computer software companies.
Dr. Chadima Cumaranatunge is an Assistant Professor of Interactive Information Technology at the University of Hartford. He teaches an introduction to the IIT major, covering Flash and some ActionScript, a gaming course using Flash and ActionScript as well as educational technology courses in the Education, Nursing, and Health Professions College. Recently he received a grant to teach an experimental course in robotics.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
For any developer who needs to write scalable applications this is a must for your bookshelf. It is very well written and explains how the patterns work backed up with good examples. Anyone who is unsure about how to implement a particular pattern for their solution will get a good understanding after reading this book.
All the expected patterns are in there, mvc with composite, decorator, proxy and state patterns to name a few.
If you are new to design patterns I'm sure you will quickly see the benefits once you start to pad out the examples with your own code.
All the expected patterns are in there, mvc with composite, decorator, proxy and state patterns to name a few.
If you are new to design patterns I'm sure you will quickly see the benefits once you start to pad out the examples with your own code.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
15 reviews
101 of 125 people found the following review helpful
Worse than uninformative, it's actually mis-leading
27 Aug 2007
Format:Paperback
My biggest complaint with this book is that the authors basically just took the design patterns found in Java and C++ and re-implemented them to run under ActionScript 3 (AS3). The list is comprehensive, but it's clear that the authors don't "think in AS3".
In several core ways, AS3 is very different than Java and even more so with respect to C++. For instance, the event model is baked into the language and asynchronous programming is a different style. Also, XML and XPath are native constructs in ActionScript 3, not libraries like they are in other languages. These differences (among others) imply that some of the original Gang of Four (GoF) and Java patterns manifest themselves differently and some patterns don't apply at all. There are a few places in the book where the authors use the built-in events infrastructure and few other native features, but it's clear that they don't think in AS3. It seems like they think in Java.
For instance, the observer pattern is one of the core GoF and HeadFirst patterns. However, the native event capability in AS3 serves the same purpose. Rather than show you how/why to use the native event capability, this book happily shows you an AS3 translation of the GoF/HeadFirst observer pattern and never tells you to use the built-in event capability instead. In contrast, the Joey Lott and Danny Patterson book from Adobe Press, does not have a section on the observer pattern, but there is a chapter on "WORKING WITH EVENTS".
The above problem would be enough for me to recommend that you not buy this book but it gets worse. This book is not even great at teaching you how to think in design patterns. To be fair, neither is the original GoF design patterns book nor is the Lott/Patterson book. The best book for this purpose is the HeadFirst book. Its examples are Java but, the HeadFirst book walks you through application evolution which really makes the case for why the patterns are useful. The HeadFirst book also includes exercises and discussion as well as a quirky style that really make the concepts sink in so you learn to recognize when to use each pattern.
If you are an AS3 programmer who is already familiar with design patterns, just get the Lott/Patterson book. If you are new to design patterns, get the HeadFirst book AND the Lott/Patterson book.
In several core ways, AS3 is very different than Java and even more so with respect to C++. For instance, the event model is baked into the language and asynchronous programming is a different style. Also, XML and XPath are native constructs in ActionScript 3, not libraries like they are in other languages. These differences (among others) imply that some of the original Gang of Four (GoF) and Java patterns manifest themselves differently and some patterns don't apply at all. There are a few places in the book where the authors use the built-in events infrastructure and few other native features, but it's clear that they don't think in AS3. It seems like they think in Java.
For instance, the observer pattern is one of the core GoF and HeadFirst patterns. However, the native event capability in AS3 serves the same purpose. Rather than show you how/why to use the native event capability, this book happily shows you an AS3 translation of the GoF/HeadFirst observer pattern and never tells you to use the built-in event capability instead. In contrast, the Joey Lott and Danny Patterson book from Adobe Press, does not have a section on the observer pattern, but there is a chapter on "WORKING WITH EVENTS".
The above problem would be enough for me to recommend that you not buy this book but it gets worse. This book is not even great at teaching you how to think in design patterns. To be fair, neither is the original GoF design patterns book nor is the Lott/Patterson book. The best book for this purpose is the HeadFirst book. Its examples are Java but, the HeadFirst book walks you through application evolution which really makes the case for why the patterns are useful. The HeadFirst book also includes exercises and discussion as well as a quirky style that really make the concepts sink in so you learn to recognize when to use each pattern.
If you are an AS3 programmer who is already familiar with design patterns, just get the Lott/Patterson book. If you are new to design patterns, get the HeadFirst book AND the Lott/Patterson book.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Great detailed book
18 Feb 2008
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I bought this book when I wanted to pick up on Design Patterns in AS3 (I had little to no experience with DP in AS2), and after I read "Essential ActionScript 3.0". I bought it without reading any reviews because I like O'reilly books, but after I placed the order, I looked at the reviews, and noticed that people were favoring "Advanced ActionScript 3 with Design Patterns" (by Joey Lott and Danny Patterson) -- so I went to the closest B&N and picked it up a day before the O'reilly one arrived, so I was able to compare. I must say that I liked the O'reilly book by FAR over the other one, mostly because of the detailed and extensive examples, descriptive copy and easy-to-follow real-life samples (even though the author referred to Gnarls Barkley as a person at one point.. haha).
So - for someone like me, who knew AS3 (the books assumes you do), but wanted to get into OOP with Design Patters, this was an excellent choice. I would highly recommend it.
So - for someone like me, who knew AS3 (the books assumes you do), but wanted to get into OOP with Design Patters, this was an excellent choice. I would highly recommend it.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Impressive resource on Design Patterns for ActionScript 3.0
24 Nov 2007
Format:Paperback
I've been reading through O'Reilly's "ActionScript 3.0 Design Patterns: Object Oriented Programming Techniques" by William Sanders and Chandima Cumaranatunge for the last few weeks and have to say its an incredibly useful resource.
The interesting thing is that this book approaches design patterns in the more traditional sense, not dumbing down on the object-oriented terminology. In that sense it is very approachable to those coming from a Java or C background and are looking for ActionScript 3.0 implementations of specific patterns.
Full review at: [...]
The interesting thing is that this book approaches design patterns in the more traditional sense, not dumbing down on the object-oriented terminology. In that sense it is very approachable to those coming from a Java or C background and are looking for ActionScript 3.0 implementations of specific patterns.
Full review at: [...]
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
- Books > Computing & Internet > Digital Lifestyle > Online Shopping > Amazon
- Books > Computing & Internet > Programming > Languages & Tools > Object Oriented
- Books > Computing & Internet > Programming > Languages > JavaScript
- Books > Computing & Internet > Programming > Software Design, Testing & Engineering > Design Patterns
- Books > Computing & Internet > Web Development > Web Design > Web Graphics & Animation
- Books > Computing & Internet > Web Development > Web Scripting & Programming
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
