DEVICE SPEED AND FRAMES PER SECOND

Many of the questions Flash developers ask when first working with the Flash Player for Pocket PC is how many frames per second can the Pocket PC play. This is important because Flash is frame based and much of the content and animations depend on smooth playback.

In general it's a good idea to avoid full screen wipes, full screen fades, and full screen animations. Keep in mind that updating large numbers of pixels at a time can be slow and chunky. You can expect around 8 to 15 frames per second on a device.

Frames per second on the device can vary from device to device and often depends on open applications and free memory. Be sure to check the memory settings as you test your applications and observe the frames per second with various applications opened. In most cases, 12 frames per second is a good frame rate to start at, but results may vary from project to project.

On the Flashenabled.com/book site, we have included a Flash for Pocket PC frames per second detector to aid developers in optimizing content for the wide variety of uses (see Figure 2.33).

Figure 2.33. Moock.org frames per section detector.