MAX Presentation – Tackling Memory & Performance in Flash, Flex, and AIR

Let’s start by saying thank you to everyone that attended my MAX presentation: Tackling Memory & Performance with Flash, Flex, and AIR. This presentation was made possible by a joint effort of Jun Heider and myself. Below is a link to the Adobe.Tv recording of this presentation.

This was a presentation that almost wasn’t though. For those who don’t know, this presentation was originally planned to be presented by Sean Chistmann of EffectiveUI, yet as he fell sick Adobe called Jun and myself to fill in the gap. Working closely with Jun and Sean (when available) we added our own personal touches to the presentation and presented on Tuesday and Wednesday of Max. Again, thank you to everyone that attended either of the sessions and all the great feedback we received.

Tackling Memory and Performance in Flash, Flex, and AIR
Presentation Source Files

Below is a list of helpful resources for continued education in this subject:

Livedocs

• http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/gumbo/html/WS6f97d7caa66ef6eb1e63e3d11b6c4d0169-8000.html
• http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashPlatform/beta/reference/actionscript/3/flash/sampler/package-detail.html

Flex Profiler and flash.sampler.* classes:

• http://blogs.adobe.com/aharui/2008/09/using_the_flex_builder_3x_prof.html
• http://www.slideshare.net/srp1970/overview-of-flex-profiler/
• http://lists.motion-twin.com/pipermail/haxe/2007-August/011362.html
• http://www.jinten.net/blog/archives/47
• http://ticore.blogspot.com/2008/05/as3-observe-object-size.html
• http://www.insideria.com/2008/06/profiling-flex-applications-sa.html
• http://stopcoding.wordpress.com/2008/04/26/lets-talk-about-the-flex-profiler/

AVM2 and MMgc:

• http://www.adobe.com/devnet/actionscript/articles/avm2overview.pdf
• http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/MMgc
• http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2006/09/garbage_collect.html

Performance and Memory Management:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performance_analysis
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_management
• http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/resource_management.html
• http://www.slideshare.net/dcoletta/optimizing-flex-applications/
• http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/as3_tuning.html
• http://adobedev.adobe.acrobat.com/p71169528/
• http://www.insideria.com/jun-heider/
• http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2006/06/as3_resource_ma.html
• http://blogs.adobe.com/aharui/2007/03/garbage_collection_and_memory.html
• http://www.moock.org/blog/archives/000223.html
• http://blog.flexmonkeypatches.com/2007/03/28/flash-player-memory-management-and-garbagecollection-redux-2/
• http://olegfilipchuk.com/2009/07/24/unload-you-module/
• http://www.colettas.org/?p=115

Data Transfer and Performance:

• http://www.jamesward.org/census

Elastic Racetrack:

• http://www.onflex.org/ted/2005/07/flash-player-mental-model-elastic.php
• http://www.craftymind.com/2008/04/18/updated-elastic-racetrack-for-flash-9-and-avm2/

AIR/Flash Player Mac Idle CPU:

• http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2009/05/idle_cpu_usage.html
• http://blogs.adobe.com/air/2009/05/performance_tips_for_adobe_air.html

Flexcoders:

• http://www.mail-archive.com/flexcoders@yahoogroups.com/msg86385.html
• http://www.mail-archive.com/flexcoders@yahoogroups.com/msg83781.html
• http://www.mail-archive.com/flexcoders@yahoogroups.com/msg95073.html
• http://www.mail-archive.com/flexcoders@yahoogroups.com/msg92116.html
• http://www.mail-archive.com/flexcoders@yahoogroups.com/msg86738.html

Adobe Bugbase (Please vote for these bugs!):

• http://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/SDK-15731
• https://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/SDK-14820
• https://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FP-2009
• https://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/SDK-14781