ActionScript 3.0 Design Patterns

A Tale of Two Factories: One New and One Reused

This is the first of three posts on the actual AIR ActionScript 3.0 Design Pattern catalog. Previously, I had discussed the thinking that went into the design of the Catalog, and here is the first actual AIR application with the Creational Patterns portion of the catalog all set up and ready to use. Figure 1 shows what each page looks like: (By the way, the actual image in the catalog is almost twice the size as what you see in Figure 1.)

Before going on, you can download all of the source code and the AIR application by clicking the Download button. Additionally, you may want to access the Catalog Online.

I changed the color combinations. I concluded that Kuler’s 1944mustang color set was the best for this project because I needed a white background and I liked the orange for highlight. I used red for labeling on the diagrams, but it was used sparsely and provided a consistency.
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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.
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