I have a WPF application that updates a lot of text. I noticed using SysInternals procmon.exe that this constantly loads the font file e.g.
Why is this? It seems rather inefficient.
Related
My app is too large for the 50 meg limit so I am looking at some ways to significantly reduce the file size.
If I discard a dpi what happens when it runs on that dpi? I have some HUGE backgrounds making my app very bloated, I was wondering if I can remove them all but say the HD one and it would scale or would it be simply empty? Or would I need to change the background image scaling to make it do this?
Also CN1 seems to use png, can I use jpg for selected items to save space? Backgrounds that are 2.3 meg pngs could be 35k jpgs.. Even if I wrote a script that jpeged them after I press save in the gui designer, this could work I assume?
Any any further final tips for reducing the size of cn1 apps?
A 50mb app is not only big, but prone to be slow on devices (performance wise).
To reduce your App size tremendously, do the following:
All my answers are based on old GUI Builder
For background image, use a single image (not multi-image) and style the form UIID to use the image and type IMAGE_TO_FILL.
Avoid using png image whenever possible, CN1 supports jpg perfectly.
Don't use images for basic icons, use fonticon. Thousand of icons could be made 100kb and of high quality svg image that doesn't pixelate. I will explain at the end of this list how to create your custom fonticons.
Avoid using 9-piece border image where it's not really needed, try to use solid background color if it won't ruin your design.
Delete unused images, they also take a lot of space. On your GUI Builder.
Re-use UIIDs, instead of creating multiple similar UIIDs.
Migrate your GUI Builder forms to code, I posted a sample form Class to answer another question here and also talk about similar thing here.
Delete UIIDs you're not using and in most cases, copy and paste UUID of unselected style to selected, instead of creating similar.
Be Careful with this. Keep your GUI Builder open, make sure Xml team mode is checked under File, save the GUI Builder after deleting Unused Images, without closing the GUI Builder, go to your project folder -> res -> delete theme.xml and the theme folder inside res folder (The name might be different if you've renamed your theme.res file). Now go back to your app and save again. A fresh copy of your res files would be saved in the same folder.
Minimise the amount of background images you use, Modern good looking apps are simple plain background apps. E.g, Facebook, Twitter, Uber, AirBnB, BBC News App and many others. Unless your app is actually a game or necessarily require rich images that have to be static.
Watch this video about performance tuning, It's a bit old but still contains useful information
If your app is bigger than 20 mb on iOS and 5mb on android, you should be worried about it's performance.
Creating fonticons:
Go to fontello.com and check the icons present, if there are icons you need that are not there...
Go to flaticon.com and search for it there, download it as svg and drag'n'drop the svg on fontello webpage. If the icon doesn't look as expected...
Go back to flaticon.com and download the image as black 512px png image and go to online-convert.com, convert the png to Monochrome svg file, this helps you to create a compound image that works well with fontello.
download the fonticon as zip on fontello and follow Shai's chat app example to use it. the zip contains demo html file to preview your icons and also a config.json that can be drag'n'drop on fontello.com to continue where you stopped.
I have a C#.NET winforms project, and some controls are moving in design view whenever I build the project. Its only some of the controls (a panel with a label and datagridview in it, a button, a link button and a label) are all moving up on each build.
Has anyone seen this before or know how to fix it?
I think it is because of the AutoScaleDimensions. My guess is that your form was originally created on another machine.
Per MSDN.
"The AutoScaleDimensions property represents the DPI or font setting
of the screen that the control was scaled to or designed for.
Specifically, at design time this property will be set by the Windows
Forms designer to the value your monitor is currently using. Then,
when the form loads at run time, if the CurrentAutoScaleDimensions
property is different from the AutoScaleDimensions, the
PerformAutoScale method will be called to perform scaling of the
control and all of its children. Afterwards, AutoScaleDimensions will
be updated to reflect the new scaling size."
My guess is that for odd some reason when you build you project property (maybe some others) gets adjusted, but not on design time.
I think about few possible reasons:
You work on multiple monitors and/or there is some odd stuff with your adapter.
There is some problem with auto-generated designer file. Maybe it
edited manually somehow.
To fix I propose to do something I would do:
Recreate form from scratch if possible, by copy-pasting bits
one-by-one.
If not take some merging tool and insert fresh form
properties.
Also here is another interesting question on AutoScaleDimentions.
I am working on an application that started out as a WinForm but it is now utilizing WPF windows with UI. The interaction is all working beautifully but when the WPF windows are first shown it takes quite a long time (around 1-3 seconds) for them to show. So long that some wonder if the app has crashed (until the content shows). The second time the same windows are invoked they come up quickly. I need them to come up quickly the first time around.
I am making use of styles and control templates that are located as XAML in the resource folder. In the XAML for the WPF windows I then merge them into the windows resource dictionary. The Build Action for those (in VS 2010) needs to be set to "Resource".
Preferably I want to keep them in separate files for easy maintenance.
As far as I understand if the build action was "Page" the XAML would be precompiled and should load faster but if I set it to Page I cannot merge them into the resource dictionary. Is there a way around that?
I am fairly new to this part of WPF and so far my internet search hasn't been successful.
To be clear: I am not talking about WPF controls being embedded in WinForms. I am talking about entirely separate WPF windows that are spawned from the WinForm context.
Is there a way to precompile the entire app or at least all XAML (it's all static, no dynamic XAML)?
Thanks in advance!
Edit: The UIs are not heavy by any means. The ones in question have between 5 and 20 buttons and the usual containers (basically a grid with 1 or 2 stack panels).
Update:
I tried precompilation with "NGEN install appname" - no effect on WPF window load.
I included all resources and templates into the window.xaml - no effect.
(window.xaml is pre-compiled)
I found this really interesting article about pre-jitting upon app load here:
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/dotnet/pre_JIT.aspx
(I used the improvement suggested by 'ittay ophir')
again: no effect on WPF window load...
The load times simply won't change on first load but they are significantly reduced on all consecutive loads (loads in 20ms or less).
What the heck is going on here?
How about loading the XAML asynchronously using XamlReader.LoadAsync Method ?
I am embarking on development of a Silverlight based website. I am the lone developer and am doing it on my own (ie, not for any company).
Now I want to load a lot of textual content on the website along with animations and rich user interfaces that can be created using Silverlight. The text content may change from time to time and when that happens, I don't want to do a lot of rework. So I m thinking to load the text from a Word/text file into controls and whenever new content arrives/existing content is modified, I just have to append it to the Word/text file.
This way the application itself remains untouched, only the file contents keep changing. Silverlight doesn't support FlowDocument. RichTextBox doesnt have a Load or LoadFile property. So how do I go about this? Should I make use of Frame, Downloader and similar other controls as well? What do you suggest? What would be the best approach to this?
The RichTextBox does have a Xaml property so you could download Xaml files containing the restricted set of textual elements that RichTextBox supports. You could also create a Silverlight editor around which you could create and upload this Xaml text content.
However have you considered whether Silverlight is the right platform to deliver primarily textual content? HTML is pretty good at that and with frameworks such as JQuery you can create quite interactive experiences that work well across browsers.
I'm looking for an Image control for WPF which can rapidly change images. The built in WPF one is quite slow for the image sizes im using (scaled). I only need about ~3 FPS. I have considered dropping to WinForms and even D3D but I'm not sure thats the best way.
Can anyone suggest something?
WPF's Image control uses the native "Windows Imaging" and Direct3D subsystems of Windows to do all its dirty work, so if used with the right paremeters it will be pretty much as fast as anything you will find.
I suspect the problem is that your settings are causing Windows Imaging load the image at full resolution, then having Direct3D scale it. The solution to this is to do the scaling as you load the image by setting DecodePixelHeight and DecodePixelWidth on the BitmapImage you are using as an ImageSource.
Another technique that many graphics apps use to speed things up is to preload the images in the background. For example, the Windows picture viewer automatically starts loading the next image as soon as the current image is shown.
If you are preloading images, consider doing it in a separate thread. Also make sure you use BitmapCacheOption.OnLoad when you create the BitmapImage or the preloading won't actually occur (the default is OnDemand).