13.5. What's Next?

Throughout this book, we’ve demonstrated a few examples of loading external assets. Previously, we discussed loading HTML and CSS (Chapter 10), sound (Chapter 11), and video (Chapter 12). In this chapter, we focused on loading SWF and image assets, as well as text, URL variables, and binary data. We also extended the Loader and URLLoader classes to add some basic diagnostic features to make it easier to check on your loading efforts. Finally, we discussed communication with loaded SWFs and provided a few online resources that touch on additional loading-related topics. With this information as a head start, you should be able to begin working with just about any basic external asset, and begin explorations into intermediate and advanced loading issues.

Next we’re going to cover XML, which is among the most important standard formats used for data exchange, and E4X, the dramatically simplified approach to working with XML in ActionScript. XML is very widely used and enables a significant leg up over name-value pairs when it comes to structured data and large data sizes.