DestroyTwitter 2.0 Preview: Improved item rendering

 

DestroyTwitter 2.0 Preview: Tweet recycling

The biggest feature in DestroyTwitter 2.0 is multiple accounts. Because of this, a serious amount of planning went into memory optimization. I didn’t want usage to double with each account added, so I adopted a few approaches that worked beyond my wildest expectations. One technique I used is improved item rendering. A few weeks back, I wrote a post about scrolling methods. The current one used in DestroyTwitter 1.7.2 uses preallocation and masking. It’s great for scrolling speed, but awful for instantiation speed and memory usage.

In 2.0, I adopted what I call fixed-height smooth recyclable scrolling. Instead of 200 list items for 200 tweets, I have only the visible items and a data list of 200 tweets. So far, it’s proving its worth. In recent testing, I’ve seen a 20mb memory reduction when using three accounts simultaneously in 2.0 compared to one account in 1.7.2. Results like this make me a happy developer.

11.17.2009
13 comments comments
 

13 replies

  1. Oh this is exciting! Lists, multiple accounts, better screen rendering… Ill jump of the “Deck” so fast when this is ready!

    Thanks Jonnie!

    Gautch  Nov 17  2:04 pm

  2. Multiple accounts! YAY! I can’t wait to drop my current app and go back to DT

    lordscarlet  Nov 17  2:09 pm

  3. I’m waiting for it!

    Athos  Nov 17  2:09 pm

  4. Wow ! great news, thanks for your effort in making DT a much better app! Been using it a lot.

    EdLamblet  Nov 17  2:13 pm

  5. Can wait to test it my friend! ;)

    Daniel "warmth" Delgado  Nov 17  2:14 pm

  6. WOW ! I can’t wait for this update. It looks excellent !

    PlayBoyMan  Nov 17  2:14 pm

  7. This looks really nice…

    dwfaust  Nov 17  2:19 pm

  8. YES! I have multiple accounts. For DT to have this feature will help greatly and I can drop the other thingys I use and get back to fully using this one! You rock and I am highly looking forward to this upgrade!

    Zee  Nov 17  2:24 pm

  9. You rock!

    I am anxiously waiting for DT2.0 :-)

    Juan José  Nov 17  2:40 pm

  10. I’m looking forward to using this! If you need any beta testers, I’d be more than happy to help!

    Ross Imlach  Nov 17  5:40 pm

  11. Looks really cool, I can’t wait to use it!

    StefanPostulart  Nov 17  6:21 pm

  12. Wow, looks veeeeery nice, plz i wanna beta test it!

    MaoP  Nov 18  9:51 pm

  13. Regarding scrolling methods, check out the Grid component and GridLayout utility class in the bumpslide libary. I believe it is doing something similar to your “fixed-height smooth recyclable scrolling”, and it is a nice list renderer foundation for pure AS3 projects. http://bumpslide.googlecode.com/

    david knape  Nov 30  2:35 pm

Reply