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Enterprise Development with Flex

Yakov Fain et al.

 

Created:
31 August 2009
User Level:
Advanced
Products:
Flex

Enterprise Development with Flex book excerpt: Performance improvements

People consider web applications fast for one of two reasons: either they’re fast for real or they give an impression of being fast. Ideally, you should do your best to create a RIA to be very responsive, but if you hit the ceiling imposed by a technology you’re using, you can at least try to improve the perceived performance of the system. Drawing an analogy with weather reports, the temperature may be cool, but “feel like” freezing. No matter how cool your RIA is, it should never feel like freezing.

In this chapter, you’ll learn how to use application preloaders to make the first page of your RIA appear on the display as soon as possible while the rest of the application loads in the background.

Login screen

Login view of lightweight preloader

This chapter covers the following topics:

  • Planning for modularization
  • It takes two to perform
  • Application startup and preloaders
  • Using runtime shared libraries
  • Optimizing RSL loading
  • A grab bag of useful habits

Note: Excerpted from Enterprise Development with Flex: Rough Cuts Version. Used with permission of O'Reilly Media, Inc. For more information about this book and how to buy it, visit the book’s page.

Prerequisites

Knowledge of Flex.

Requirements

In order to make the most of this article, you need the following software and files:

Flex Builder 3

Read the complete chapter

Chapter 8: Performance Improvements: Selected Topics (PDF, 2 MB)

About the authors

Yakov Fain is a Managing Director at Farata Systems, a company provides consulting and training services. He authored several books on Java and Flex and dozens of articles on software development. Sun Microsystems has nominated and awarded Mr. Fain with the title of Java Champion, which was presented to only a hundred people in the world. Yakov is Certified Adobe Flex Instructor. He holds MS in Applied Math. You can reach him at yfain@faratasystems.com.

Anatole Tartakovsky is a technology consultant, emerging technologies enthusiast and problem solver. He is a Managing Principal of Farata Systems and is responsible for creation of frameworks and reusable components. Prior Anatole played roles as Technology Consultant, Project Manager, CTO, and Mentor for various enterprises. Anatole authored number of books and articles on Flex, AJAX, XML, and client-server technologies. His education includes MS in mathematics and post graduate work in Expert Systems. You can reach him at atartakovsky@faratasystems.com.

Dr. Victor Rasputnis is a Managing Principal of Farata Systems. He's responsible for Farata consulting and mentoring practice, providing architectural design to companies implementing RIA with Adobe Flex, Air and Livecycle technologies. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from the Moscow Institute of Robotics. Victor is Certified Adobe Flex Instructor. Victor lives in New York with his wife Aziza and his daughter Alice. He likes playing tennis and skiing with his friends. You can reach him at vrasputnis@faratasystems.com.