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Pre-load display pages on startup

toby 1 year ago in IQANdesign updated by Gustav Widén (System support) 12 months ago 7

I noticed that when opening a display page, there is a noticeable lag when you first open a display page, however subsequent launches of the same display page are almost instant. This can be slightly reduced with increased loop time, however, it always stays noticeable and I would prefer to run faster loop times. I was wondering if there could be a feature where you could preload certain display pages on startup, as I'd prefer the system take 5-10s longer to boot than for it to feel laggy when opening display pages and or have to run slower loop times.

What software version is this on? 

Since version 6.05, the time to switch between display pages is faster thanks to pre-loading more of the graphics: 

Release notes - IQANdesign 6

53032Improve MD4 page navigation
Improved performance when switching between pages in the MD4.


We are currently using 6.08.25.8210.

With 6.08, you have the improved page navigation from 6.05. All display controls are pre-loaded on startup. 


What does take longer when entering a display page the first time is loading the images. 

If you observe that it takes a long time to enter a page the first time and that it is much faster entering the same page later, then the amount of images and especially size of images is interesting to look at. 


I checking if your application have images that are larger than needed. 


Ok that makes sense, our UI is pretty reliant on images. We have been mainly using vector graphics, which do seem to have larger file sizes than PNGs or JPGs, I will try replacing some of the larger images and see if we get an improvement. Though since it's the images that take time to load, I still think a pre-load images option (By page) would be useful for UIs that use lots of images.

One aspect to consider before you spend to much time on changing images. 

Some SVG files can be unnecessarily large, but this mainly impact the file size of the project file. 

 

When you use SVG images on MD4 display pages, IQANdesign automatically saves a PNG version of the file with the size and color you defined. It is the PNG that gets used by the display page graphics when running. 


Ok thanks, good to know, is there a way to see the file sizes that are being loaded as to determine what is worth reducing in size?

No, unfortunately there is no tool for seeing this in IQANdesign.