It’s been about a year and a half since my last test of AS3 versus JavaScript and there have been several major releases of both browsers and the Flash Player. Today, we pit every major browser against each other and Flash Player itself to get an updated picture of which provides the fastest scripting environment on the web.
String.charCodeAt Is Really Fast
String.charCodeAt is a simple function so you might expect the function call overhead (huge in AS3) to making calling it frequently quite slow. You’d think that there’s no way an charCodeAt-using AS3 function could beat a built-in String function like indexOf. Would you be right? Today’s article examines this special function to see if we might defy conventional wisdom and achieve a performance boost.
If-Else Trees vs. Objects and Dictionaries
If-else trees have some of the best performance of any conditional code, including if-else ladders, the ternary (? :) operator, and the switch statement. But how do they stack up against the O(1) lookups that Object and Dictionary offer us AS3 programmers? Today’s article finds out!
ASC 2.0 Conditionals Performance
Surprisingly, some interesting things have been happening with conditionals like if-else in AS3. First, a brand new AS3 compiler—ASC 2.0—has been released with the promise that it’ll generate more efficient bytecode. Second, some readers have pointed out the existence of a new (to me) technique: the “if-else tree”. Today’s article takes a look at just what that is and tests it against the classic options: if-else, the ternary (? :) operator, and the switch statement. Which will be fastest?
JPEG-XR Viewer (PNG, GIF, SWF, and JPEG too!)
Having covered JPEG-XR images recently, one thing has struck me as a little odd: there aren’t really any good cross-platform viewers available to look at them. Yes, it’s a bit of an obscure format, but shouldn’t there be something available? Well, I decided to make a simple Flash app to load a JPEG-XR image from a URL or a browse button and display it. Along the way I added support for PNG, JPEG, GIF, AVM1 SWF, and AVM2 SWF. Today’s article has the source code and the viewer itself. Added support for panning the image
JPEG Compressor Roundup
Now that we’ve determined the best PNG compressors to create PNG images with, let’s delve into the world of JPEG compressors. As with PNG, we have multiple options to choose from in our Flash apps when we’re looking to encode images such as screenshots. Which is best? Today’s article delves into each compressor’s performance and file size efficiency.
PNG Compression Followup
Does the type of image matter when you’re compressing it to PNG? Does it affect performance? Size? This week’s article looks into these questions to find out how each of the PNG compressors performs on three different types of images: an icon, a photo, and random noise.
PNG Compressor Roundup
Flash Player has had built-in PNG compression since version 11.3. But how does it fare against all of the other PNG compressors out there? Does it compress faster? Does it produce smaller file sizes? Today’s article explores your options when it comes to compressing PNG files so you can get the fastest or smallest PNG possible.
Image Loading Performance
Which image format is fastest to load? That was perhaps the most relevant question in last week’s article, so it’s time to explore it more deeply. Today’s article examines differences between different types of PNG, JPEG, and JPEG-XR files to answer questions like “does the JPEG quality setting matter?” and “is indexed PNG faster than full (ARGB) PNG?” Read on for the test and all the details.
PNG, JPEG, and JPEG-XR Compression and Decompression Performance
Are you using the fastest assets you can? Yes, even the file format of the assets you use has a big bearing on the performance of your app. Ask yourself: is PNG faster to decompress than JPEG? Is it faster to compress to JPEG-XR or PNG? Do the quality settings matter? Today’s article explores the performance of Flash’s main three image formats—PNG, JPEG, and JPEG-XR—to find out which decompresses fastest at load time and compresses fastest at save time.