27.1 Formulating the Application Overview

Before starting any application, formulate a plan. Clarify the project goals and map out a strategy to meet them. A My Page application requires a framework that allows various modules to be added, as illust rated in Figure 27-1.

Figure 27-1. A conceptual overview of the My Page framework

The application should have a scalable architecture that allows the developer to offer more modules and allows the user to add more of these modules to his customized page. The My Page framework should not care about the particulars of each module and should treat all modules uniformly.

The sample application code that is provided in this chapter includes the following files:

myPage.fla

The My Page framework document

notes.fla

A note module

addressBook.fla

An address book module

search.fla

A web search modular service (uses Google's web service)

services.xml

An XML document that tells the framework which modules are available

SupportFunctions.as

An ActionScript file with functions that are shared by multiple movies

The final files can be downloaded from http://www.person13.com/ascb.