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+# Actor Best Practices
+
+Some aspects of front and actor design can be tricky to understand, even for experienced engineers.
+The following are several best practices you should keep in mind when adding new actors and fronts.
+
+## Actor Should Clean Up Itself, Don't Wait For the Client
+
+In the past, some actors would wait for the client to send a "you are done now" message when the toolbox closes to shutdown the actor.
+This seems reasonable at first, but keep in mind that the connection can disappear at any moment.
+It may not be possible for the client to send this message.
+
+A better choice is for the actor to do all clean up itself when it's notified that the connection goes away.
+Then there's no need for the client to send any clean up message, and we know the actor will be in a good state no matter what.
+
+## Actor Destruction
+
+Ensure that the actor's destroy is really destroying everything that it should. Here's an example from the animation actor:
+
+```js
+destroy: function() {
+  Actor.prototype.destroy.call(this);
+  this.targetActor.off("will-navigate", this.onWillNavigate);
+  this.targetActor.off("navigate", this.onNavigate);
+
+  this.stopAnimationPlayerUpdates();
+  this.targetActor = this.observer = this.actors = null;
+},
+```
+
+## Child Actors
+
+With protocol.js actors, if your creates child actors for further functionality, in most cases you should call:
+
+```js
+this.manage(child);
+```
+
+in the parent after constructing the child, so that the child is destroyed when the parent is.