Gentle Reader, this post includes one completed application and one in the works. The AIR ActionScript 3.0 Design Pattern Catalog is meant to be a developer’s aid, and so your ideas of what to include in the catalog is important. We would really appreciate your comments on what you think would be useful in developing an information template to be used for all of the design patterns.
I recently returned from a trip to Prague in the Czech Republic, and I went to work creating a video player for my HD videos I made using a Flip Mino HD camcorder (http://www.sandlight.net/prague). Rather than pulling out and reusing my trusty State Design Pattern player (see Chapter 10), I decided to start from scratch and create a player not using a design pattern. Then I would take the completed video player and use it as an example to show how to refactor a program to a design pattern. (This will be in an upcoming post.) Since I’ve never had to refactor the original program (tweak, maybe but not refactor), and I hadn’t worked with a State pattern lately, I found myself digging up all of the materials on the State Design Pattern. What I wished I had was a handy desktop app that I could click that would show me the essentials of the different design patterns. It would be an abbreviated design pattern catalog that could be used like the little Design Pattern Principles and Lunch Bucket Rules AIR app. Then when I need a quick reference I could use the desktop app to look up the essentials of the pattern.
Continue reading ‘The Developing an AIR ActionScript 3.0 Design Pattern Catalog and the AIR Magic Table’
This post is going to be short and sweet. I worked up a little application that you can see here. Also, I created an AIR version, and it now seems to work on Mac, Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows XP. You’re welcome to download it here (AIR version) and put it someplace handy where you can quickly look up the main principles guiding OOP and design patterns.
Principles in Your Lunch Bucket
Here’s the whole idea of why I started this project in the first place. We need something that makes it easy to remember and use good practices at work. The posts reviewing OOP and DP principles on this blog is one resource, but something simpler (and sillier) would be helpful to have available when cranking out code under a deadline.
Yes, I practiced what is preached
When developing this little application, I started off the wrong way, and decided that no! Never again! I’d start off right, and it wasn’t any more difficult. I used a Strategy pattern, and later I’ll put the whole thing up here with an explanation of how this “work” project was done by following the dictums I was writing about.
So take a look and let me get your valuable (as always) feedback.
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.
Bill Sanders
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