If you're like me, you might have thought that Adobe AIR (formerly Apollo) would provide a more powerful computing platform for desktop RIA development. Well, you'd be wrong. After running a number of performance tests ranging from long-running financial calculations to CPU intensive UI effects, AIR and Flex executed at approximately the same speed (~2% in favor of Flex -- insignificant).
While I must profess a little disappointment, I don't think its a huge downside of the platform since Flash provides so many other core competencies. However, you need to take it into account whenever you are about to perform a lengthy IO operation. The user interface will freeze up when saving/generating multiple files. At Pier, we've been popping up a modal window just prior to all IO ops to keep the user from trying to interact w/ the UI during the freeze.
My suggestion is take the time to setup you IO framework so you don't have to code a custom modal on every operation.
Cheers,
Todd
2 comments:
Hi Todd,
We haven't gone through and optimized AIR yet, so keep that in mind. I don't think that the optimization will affect that part of performance because we're using the same Flash Player that everyone else is, but we'll see.
=Ryan
rstewart@adobe.com
I definitely understand that optimizations fall a long way down the list w/ a new technology like AIR. *Still* I was hoping the move to the desktop w/ bring some more horsepower along w/ it.
Thoughts of crazy 3d apps dancing in my head
Hopefully, I'll catch you when the AIR bus hits Boston.
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