I wholeheartedly agree with you. Do not use flex unless its necessary. Someone posted on here about two maps comparing the performance between the AS3 version and a Flex version.
I particularly notice performance hits on the Flex version when scrolling in and out of a map. When you use the mouse wheel - the AS3 conversion runs seamlessly. The Flex version lags when scrolling in. With FlashPlayer10 I believe Adobe was supposed to add caching of the flex core to the user's cache so it would not need to be downloaded with every new flash player the user visits. Unfortunately I didn't keep track of that so I don't know if this ever transpired. If that did / when it does take place - that should improve things - however that requires users taking advantage of and installing flash player 10. On Aug 23, 7:25 am, Kevin Macdonald <[email protected]> wrote: > 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_javascr... > > 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
