<p>I ran across the following code in <a href="http://www.quietlyscheming.com/blog/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Ely Greenfield's</a> SuperImage from his Book component - I understand loader.load() but what does the rest of do?</p>

<pre><code>loader.load((newSource is URLRequest)? newSource:new URLRequest(newSource));
</code></pre>

<p>It looks like some kind of crazy inline if statement but still, I'm a little preplexed.  And if it is an if statement - is this way better than a regular if statement?</p>

this is using the
ternary ?: operator
.  the first part is the condition, between the ? and : is what to return if the condition is true.  after the : is what to return if the condition is false.
a simpler example
```
```
String str = null;
int x = (str != null) ? str.length() : 0;
```
```
would be the same as
```
```
String str = null;
int x;
if (str != null)
  x = str.length()
else
  x = 0;
```
```