Author Archive for chandima

Minimalist MVC example using the PureMVC Framework

Published
by
chandima
on December 27, 2007
in Design Patterns, Flash, MVC and OOP
. 17 Comments

Several months ago, I was looking for a framework that would streamline AS3 application development. Cairngorm and PureMVC were the most mature frameworks out there and I remember being particularly impressed with PureMVC mainly due to the solid documentation that came with it. Cairngorm may be robust, but I just couldn’t get my head wrapped around it by glancing at the docs and examples. In contrast, PureMVC came with a Conceptual Diagram that explained the framework using the design patterns that I was familiar with. Cairngorm does have similar diagrams that explain its microarchitecture, but it exemplifies my initial thoughts — I just couldn’t get a quick, big picture understanding of it easily. Not only has Cliff Hall done a masterful job on the PureMVC framework, but the effort he’s put into the documentation really underscores the importance of documentation and diagrams on dissemination and adoption.

Cairngorm or PureMVC?
Recently, Ali Mills and Luke Bayes made a presentation on Flex Application Frameworks. Their choices essentially boiled down to Cairngorm and PureMVC and concluded that PureMVC came out on top. However, I highly recommend that developers watch the whole presentation as many enterprise developers in the audience made comments that challenged the easy differentiation of the two frameworks. Having the backing of a stable organization like Adobe, as is the case with Cairngorm, means a lot for enterprise development. Also, this post on Bill Lane’s blog and several comments implying that PureMVC is much harder to learn than Cairngorm got me thinking if a really simple application would help scaffold the transition to PureMVC.

I’ve implemented the minimalist example from the MVC chapter of our book (available as a free download from Adobe Devnet) using the PureMVC framework. Now this is not a full-fledged application, but a very minimal example meant to explain the inner workings of the PureMVC framework. Before diving in, a brief introduction to some of the important aspects of the framework will help. This was the hard stuff that I had to internalize before starting out. These concepts are more eloquently explained in much greater detail by Cliff Hall in the framework documentation.

Continue reading ‘Minimalist MVC example using the PureMVC Framework’

MVC and Factory Method Pattern Chapters on Adobe DEVNET

Published
by
chandima
on September 21, 2007
in Design Patterns, Factory Method and MVC
. 0 Comments

Two chapters from the ActionScript 3.0 Design Patterns book are available as a free download from devnet. Each chapter contains multiple examples. The factory method pattern chapter includes a print shop application, a sprite factory, and a shooter game that uses the factory method pattern to create different types of projectiles. The MVC chapter includes a weather map application and a car chase app.

Transitioning to the Desktop with Adobe AIR

Published
by
chandima
on August 10, 2007
in AIR
. 1 Comment

Video of Lee Brimelow’s session from AIR Camp Denver. Lee does a fantastic job of placing Adobe Air in the crowded field of Flash, Flex, Microsoft’s Silverlight and desktop apps. He demos several apps showing the capabilities of AIR apps including custom chrome and most importantly, the impressive speed of AIR apps running on the desktop, including several that use the Papervision3D library. He also shows how to create AIR apps using the excellent AIR Panel developed by the folks at gskinner.com (Note: Adobe now has an update for creating AIR apps from Flash CS3).

AIR opens a whole new discussion about best practices on developing desktop apps integrating ActionScript, HTML, Javascript and PDF and how to integrate design patterns that work seamlessly across multiple development frameworks.

Composite Pattern: Extending the Book to include Composite Pages (Part II)

Published
by
chandima
on August 5, 2007
in ActionScript, Composite Pattern and Design Patterns
. 6 Comments

This is part two of a two part series on developing the structure of a book using the composite pattern. In part 1, we treated pages as primitive component objects. However, pages can be further decomposed to contain text blocks and images. This example illustrates the utility of the composite pattern by demonstrating how easy it is to extend an application that implements the composite pattern by adding new composite and component classes that extend existing ones.
Continue reading ‘Composite Pattern: Extending the Book to include Composite Pages (Part II)’

AS3 Data Structures For Game Developers (and more)

Published
by
chandima
on June 10, 2007
in ActionScript, Design Patterns and OOP
. 4 Comments

Michael Baczynski has developed a package of common data structures useful for game development. However, their utility far exceeds game development and will come in very handy for application development based on design patterns. I came across this resource while searching for an AS3 hash table implementation. In addition to hash tables, the package contains ready to use structures for multi-dimensional arrays, queues, stacks, trees, heaps, graphs and vectors. The API docs are available as well.