About This Book

The title of this book says that it is about advanced ActionScript 3.0 with design patterns. It's always a little misleading to call something advanced. What we mean when we say that this book is about advanced ActionScript 3.0 is that it steps beyond the standard introductions and API references to discuss topics not normally within the scope of those basic texts. As such, we necessarily make some assumptions about you, the reader. We assume that you already understand basic programming and ActionScript 3.0 principles, including, but not limited to, variables, expressions, statements, objects, inheritance, and how to write basic classes.

In many ways, this book starts where most books leave off in regards to objectoriented Action Script. Although many books might discuss how to write a class, this book talks about the different ways you can design a class. This book talks about when, why, and how to use composition and inheritance, and how classes relate to one another to form patterns.

This book is organized in the following way:

1. Introduction to application design principals

2. Design pattern descriptions

3. Advanced concepts

Throughout the book, we'll present lots of examples, and we encourage you to follow along.

You can find additional information and updates at the official Web site for this book: http://www.rightactionscript.com/aas3wdp. This is also where you'll be able to find the AAS3WDP class library which you can download. Several classes from this library are used in various examples throughout the book, and you'll want to download the library if you want to follow along with the examples.