If you are a regular reader of Cyber Aspect, you would be aware that we have reviewed quite a lot of Flash tutorial books over the years. These have usually focused on beginner to intermediate users of Flash, and were excellent resources for those starting out, or those wishing to brush up on their skills. As a whole this has been great for people like myself, who are really just beginning to unlock the deeper and more advanced elements that Flash can offer. Advanced to expert users however have usually been left out, or at least only provided with a bare minimum of usable tutorials. So those that are new to Flash and wishing to understand the basics take heed... this is not the book for you. If however you are eagerly awaiting a resource that can challenge your actionscript knowledge further, then this is just the book you are after.

Actionscript 3.0 Design Patterns takes a good long look at Actionscript 3.0, the latest version of Actionscript to come from the Flash CS3 package and is co-written by William Sanders and Chandima Cumaranatunge, both professors in Multimedia. With backgrounds in teaching courses in Flash and Actionscript amongst other languages, this experience comes through in their tutorials. Now when I said this book is advanced, here's why. The preface contains a list of companion tools that will be required to get the most from this book. This includes the Actionscript 3.0 Reference Guide, or any other basic Actionscript 3.0 documentation that is available. This book isn't designed as an Actionscript 3.0 tutorial, and other recommended reads are mentioned as pre-requisites for these particular lessons. It seems like a lot to ask, but bear in mind that this edition was published just as the final version of Actionscript 3.0 was released, so its focus is on Object-Orientated programming (OOP) and not an introduction to Actionscript 3.0.

The content is divided into five parts, each examining fundamental design patterns, organising them into creational, structural, behavioural and multiple Pattern categories. Some of the components within include:

• Key Features of Actionscript and its development into a OOP language
• The benefits of using Design Patterns
• Creational Patterns - Factory Method and Singleton Patterns
• Structural Patterns - Decorator, Adaptor and Composite Patterns
• Behavioural Patterns - Command, Observer, Template Method, State and Strategy Patterns
• Multiple Patterns - Model-View-Controller and Symmetric Proxy Patterns

Going through these chapters I found the tutorials well thought out and written, explaining in simplest terms (that is possible for this difficult subject matter) about the basics of the Design Patterns being implemented. These include some interesting game type programs (such as a vertical shooter game and a car driving program) and various example scripts, such as making a dog program 'bark' and using proper encapsulation methods to stop this program from being tampered with.

Reviewing this book I realised I am hardly an expert in Actionscript, as much of the content is beyond my skills. The tutorials however are quite easy to follow through with the authors providing practical examples of what the demonstrated content should achieve. These tutorials were enjoyable to work through, so the motivation is there to keep learning, even when the content seems very difficult. There is loads of material here to work through, so advanced users are going to find plenty to keep them busy.

At the end of the day, this is a book written by professionals for advanced and professional users so novices are going to be completely out of their depth. If you are looking for a tutorial on learning Actionscript 3.0, this title isn't it, but for those familiar with Actionscript, this book is certainly a good solid resource. Depending on your Actionscript knowledge, you could read from cover to cover, or skip around to various chapters as each section deals with differing fundamentals of Patterns. If you want to design Patterns for Actionscript, this is the place to start and scores a solid thumbs up.