Greetings All, I have been working a lot with images and animations. I have noticed quite a few problems, but the following was really puzzling me. The display time (animation rate) differences between browsers. In researching this I discoverd (and verified) the following: setTimeout and setInterval have a minimum floor and behave differently in different operating systems/browsers. Operating systems and minimum time slice: win9x and winME 55ms minimum NT and win2k 10ms minimum Then, to add to the problem, the different browsers behave differently. setTimeout breaks in all browsers at multiples of the system minimum. ie if you are using win98, settings of 1-55 = 55ms approx. 56-110 = 110ms approx. 111-165 = 165ms approx. 166-220 = 220ms approx. and so on by increments of the minimum timeslice (55 here) setInterval behaves differently based on the browser. all browsers at less than the system minimum (using win9x 55ms for examples) 0-55 = 55ms approx. IE again follows the increment of system minimum for all values as in the setTimeout example ns4 and ns6 above the system minimum will fairly closely fall on the desired setting 66ms = 66ms approx. and so on. It is possible to use a multithread technique to reduce the win9x timing to around 37ms (still testing this). What does it mean? If you are using setInterval or setTimeout in your code or using any of the animation widgets, setting a value below 55 ms is pointless for win9x (majority of users I believe). I have seen a lot of code written in DynAPI with setTimeout values below 55, this may affect how the code operates under NT as opposed to win9x. A setting of 10 that defaults to 55ms may work well under win9x, but when run under NT or win2K it may be too fast. Animation in DynAPI The majority of the animation widgets use thread as the basis for the timing. Thread uses setInterval which behaves differently under ns vs ie (see above) when above the system minimum (55ms). This results in major differences between the animation sequences if a setting above 55 is used. For example: a setting of 75 will run at 75 under NS but will default to 110 under IE. This number is the setting you apply to .sleep() when using the widgets. Just for general information, the default setting for .sleep() in thread is 50ms. I have some test pages that I got from other sources that I have been using to run tests to verify this. If anyone is interested, I will post them. I would like to hear from anyone interested in running the same tests on mac and under different browsers (opera?). I am also working on a beta of thread that uses multithreading techniques for individual animations, the goal, a smoother animation. Not sure this will work though. Another thought is that we change thread to use a series of numbers instead of the timing value itself. Then a new routine in thread could check the operating system/browser and assign a preset number based on this lookup. Unfortunately it would have to default to the values of the worst system, IEunder win9x (increments of 55). This would impact the playback under NN/win9x, but would give us a consistant animation across browsers. Isn't this what DynAPI is all about? Comments? one final interesting note, the tests under NN6 took twice as long to complete but gave the same timed results. I speculate that NN6 is somehow evaluating the code once before running it? Anybody have any ideas or facts on this? This really impacts any animation done in DynAPI when displayed under NN6 (yes, I know it is not supported yet). Cheers, Dave C. "You Changed What?!?" __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ _______________________________________________ Dynapi-Help mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/dynapi-help
