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Advanced Flash Tactics or AFTs are techniques that come from deep within the Flash Art Of War, the oldest Flash military treatise in the world. In this AFT I will go over - As3 Design Patterns On The iPhone. Before I go any farther I should point out that even though I write for O'Reilly I was not asked to actually write this, and I am doing it 100% on my own. Once I heard that as3 design patterns was now on the iPhone from the as3dp.com blog, I bought it without any hesitation! It is hands down one of the best books on AS3 centric design patterns out there. Below is as close to a non-bias review as I can give.
It would appear that O'Reilly was been releasing stand alone versions of their books on the iPhone for a little while now. I had no idea until as3dp announced their book was available. At $5 it is a bargain. This is coming from someone who has 2 copies of the book and insists that every place I work at has their own. I was happy to see that the iPhone version was the full book with a lot of added features, again for a fraction of the full book's cost.
O'Reilly's iPhone books are self contained copies of the ebook running in a modified version of Stanza, which is an excellent ebook reader. Here are some of the features the Stanza has to offer:
- Search
- Bookmarks
- Notes
- Highlighting
- Quick chapter jump
- Changing the font size
- And a few other features you would expect from an iPhone eReader
Search and bookmarking alone adds tons of value to the digital copy of as3dp. I was very excited to have the book on my phone so that I didn't have to carry the physical copy around from place to place. Also, anywhere I go I now have a copy with all my notes in it. This is a huge advantage for someone like me who lives in NYC and is a slave to public transportation. My commute can range from 20 mins to an hour depending on how bad the subways are running. Now when I travel I can read up on my favorite design patterns, I know I'm a nerd. Before I get into why this book is hands down the best resource for Design Patterns I want to cover a few problems I had with the reader:
- There is no way to take notes off the device. There is no email, and coping text out from the notes is not practical.
- The ebook version's page numbers don't correspond to the real books pages. Of course this makes sense because the ebook can only display a couple dozen lines of text verses the print one but there should be a feature to let you match up to real pages in the book especially if I want to tell someone to look up something.
- Reading text for a long time on the iPhone is not as pleasant as I thought it would be. The kindle is much better at this but carrying around another device defeated the point of what I wanted to do.
- Highlighting text wasn't as intuitive as I thought. Once I figured it out I felt better about it. The trick is to click where you want to start the highlight then click where you want it to end. It would have been nice if this worked just like the iPhone's native selection.
- Code examples are almost impossible to follow, especially since you can't email them out. I understand the limitations of the screen but reading a book on code and the device can't display it sucks. There should be some kind of pop up window with special formatting for text, charts and images.
All of that being said, nothing can detract from the quality of this book. I am still surprised to this day that a lot of Flash Developers lack a basic understanding of design patterns. Being a self taught programmer, I wouldn't say I am an expert on the subject but having this book helps fill in my knowledge gaps. The authors do an excellent job at simplifying a lot of the complex design patterns into easy to understand examples with code. On their own, design patterns are very large complex and difficult to master. As you can see I really love this book. I would not hire a SR level developer unless they can clearly explain 3 design patterns and I don't count mvc, singleton and observer since they are the most common ones.
You can buy the iPhone version of this book on iTunes here.
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So, to sum up the post:
The book is awesome, buy the real one.
The book on the iPhone blows, buy the real one.
That about right? Actually, this is a reminder to me to buy a copy for the office, not sure why we don't have one yet.
as4dp.com? You had me going there!
I read the whole article but still don't know what an AS3 Design Pattern is (and I code AS3 for a living). I guess it's a click or a book purchase away.
Cheers
Kevo Thomson, good catch on the typo. I wish there was an AS4DP too.
thebouv, I would suggest buying the iPhone book if you are ok with reading it on a small screen but I think I covered that it is a great value/purchase on the iPhone. I probably should have made the point that if you are on the fence about buying the book, paying $5 on the iphone to check it out isn't so bad. And yes you should always have a physical copy of the book, it's easier to lend to people ;-)
Tomas Sancio, it wouldn't hurt to learn about Design Patterns. Their blog is an excellent resource to get started before you buy the book or you can just get it and jump right into it. Here is post I did on some Design Patterns you are already using in AS3 http://www.insideria.com/2009/08/3-design-patterns-built-into-a.html
ActionScript 3.0 Design Patterns takes you step by step through the process, first by explaining how design patterns provide a clear road map for structuring code that actually makes OOP languages easier to learn and use. You then learn about various types of design patterns and construct small abstract examples before trying your hand at building full-fledged working applications outlined in the book.
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Good review! I found their website about a month ago and decided to buy the iPhone version first (Great deal) and then quickly realized the limitations you mentioned, so I bought the digital version -- and am now reading them together - depending on where I am.