Macromedia's architecture is like a chest filled with precious
jewels, and this book is quite simply the key to open it! One of the
most important tools provided with Flash is the Macromedia Component
Architecture: a framework of components written in ActionScript 2,
based on established design patterns, that provides a wealth of
functionality you can just bolt on to your Flash applications when
desired. This can save you an enormous amount of time during
application development and help you improve the quality of your
code. What's more, the source code is included, so if you can't find
the component you need within the component architecture, you can
just modify existing components to create your own! Expert Flash
developer and author Antonio De Donatis gives you everything you need
to master Flash components. In the first part, he shows you how the
architecture works, how to create effective component-based
applications, and how to create your own custom components from
what's already provided. The second part shows how XML can be used to
effectively describe and dynamically create not only single component
instances, but whole applications based on any number of components.
The last part of the book is a comprehensive reference to using all
of the components already available in the Macromedia Component
Architecture. It includes a specific chapter dedicated to each of the
UI components like basic usage, component management, customization,
and practical examples showing usage of each component.