Action Scripting, best practices

[thpii]

Okay... so I've been programming AS for roughly a year now... I've learned alot from Actionscript for Flash MX (the book) and I've learned alot from this forum.

I'm looking to take my skills to the next level by learning best practices. For instance, there are several different ways to write an onClipEvent,

1.) You can place your code "on top" of the movie clip
2.) You can place your code in a frame and do a:

foo.onEnterFrame = function() {}

3.) you could place the code from #2 in a file and include it
4.) etc... etc..

As I was learning, in many of the web sites I created, the code was spread out all over the place... very unorganized.

When I write perl, PHP or C code, I have certain practices that I follow. For instance, whenever I write a perl CGI script, I create a dispatch table, which I keep inside a MAIN:{} block, etc, etc... I'm looking for examples of these kinds of practices in AS...

Can anyone point me to a tutorial or book where I can read up on best practices? Any suggestions would be appreciated.

-Theron

[senocular]

It depends

It depends who you are - everyone has their own coding style
It depends what you are doing - different tasks are handled differently
It depends on how much time you have - some styles being better for revisiting and re-aculturation of code, though are often more time consuming and unpractical given certain time constraints.

... it depends.

[thpii]

While I understand that different tasks call for different practices, I'm basically looking for best practices, i.e. most common ways of writing code for a web site.

Do I place code on different movieclips and in different frames all over the movie, or is it GENERALLY better to place all your code in an external file, etc...

I'm looking for a general consensus on the issue by people who have much more experience than I do, and I will certainly keep in mind that different tasks call for different practices. I've been coding for years, but not very long with AS, and Flash/AS is very different than other languages that I am used to... (i.e. Java, C, Perl)

-Theron

[tyard]

It's rarely good practice to place your code in different frames and movieclips. Place everything in your first frame (I split mine into layers on the first frame), or if you like coding in another editor, code there and use #include in Flash. If you're planning to reuse your code in different movies, obviously the #include way is more efficient. The same goes for graphic elements-- if you are reusing items, try to make them into components. It'll pay off in the end.

[jubei]

There's an actionscript best practice whitepaper on macromedia.com. I'd recommend grabbing your info from that.

[thpii]

Thanks for the feedback from everyone, and I'll go look for that white paper...

-Theron

[thpii]

Thanks for the feedback from everyone, and I'll go look for that white paper...

-Theron

[thpii]

Just in case anyone else who reads this thread wants it, that best practices white paper is here:

http://download.macromedia.com/pub/d..._standards.pdf

-Theron

[thpii]

Just in case anyone else who reads this thread wants it, that best practices white paper is here:

http://download.macromedia.com/pub/d..._standards.pdf

-Theron

[thpii]

Just in case anyone else who reads this thread wants it, that best practices white paper is here:

http://download.macromedia.com/pub/d..._standards.pdf

-Theron