Enterprise Development with Flex book excerpt: Performance improvements

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

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 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.