I was surprised to have come across this "moment of honesty" directly from Adobe that touches on the amount of overhead that Flex & MXML adds to a Flash application, such as all of our mapping apps:
"Another thing to point out with these tests is that the MXML version are running the Flex Framework in addition to just the AS3 test. In the javascript tests they are running just a block of js directly into the JS interpreter, in the MXML comparables they are running some 200 extra classes in player memory combined with graphical rendering components, events, etc. Every rendering cycle there is lots of AS3 Flex Framework code executing. This will adversely affect performance when comparing VMs/interpreters purely. It is similar to using a Java Swing application to test Java performance, the Swing components/ framework will affect the memory, gc, and overall performance of the tests." source: http://oddhammer.com/index.php/site/comments/actionscript_and_javascript_performance_tests_updated/ We all know about Flex's "init progress bar", which increases page load time, and as Google knows better than most, hurts UX and impacts visitor retention. A Flash app doesn't need this progress bar, as its initialization consists of little more than the addition of the application's Sprite object to the Stage. This is something to consider when deciding if you really need to add the powerful & extensive (but burdensome) Flex / MXML framework on top of your Mapping application. For our mapping projects, we work strictly with ActionScript 3, and avoid MXML and Flex entirely. To date, we have not encountered any issues with this approach. I'm eager to hear of your experiences with all this, in conjunction with Google Maps API for Flash. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Google Maps API For Flash" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/google-maps-api-for-flash?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
