Scott Hanselman

Thanks, Scott! I'm glad you found it useful / fun.

I'd assume the 128 ball slowdown is a javascript issue, as the DHTML version shows exactly the same slowdown. Interestingly enough, flash seems to have the same exact issue. Then again I am on a crappy laptop with integrated intel graphics.

I wish the XBAP version had a ball selector -- I'd like to compare and see if that was more performant.

Wow...that's going way deep on the "project naming" chasm. After your podcast I went looking at the files for Silverlight (yeah, I'm a geek) and my first impression was...why did they name the file a-ghost? That's stupid! Now that you mention the name, it all makes sense...

For me the Flex (cached) version in IE 6 is the best performer - higest framerate with lowest CPU usage. Here are my results on my Dell Inspiron 6400 (Core Duo 1.73Ghz/2GB 533Mhz RAM/Default Onboard 128Mb graphics card):

Flex (Cached) in Firefox - 64 balls: 39 fps / 60% avg cpu
Flex in Firefox - 64 balls: 16 fps / 75% avg cpu
DHTML in Firefox - 64 balls: 15 fps / 80% avg cpu
Silverlight in Firefox - 64 balls: 12 fps / 90% avg cpu

Flex (cached) in IE 6.0- 64 balls: 43 fps / 50% avg cpu
Flex in IE 6.0- 64 balls: 14 fps / 75% avg cpu
DHTML in IE 6.0- 64 balls: 14 fps / 80% avg cpu
Silverlight in IE 6.0 - 64 balls: 19 fps / 90% avg cpu

But the best framerate which was the Apollo Flex based version - although I couldn't seem to change to the number of balls. The performance was 127 fps / 77% avg cpu

The performance of the Apollo DHTML version was 64 fps / 45% avg cpu (16 balls only).

cheers

Stu

Interesting stuff, Scott, thanks!

A note about WM Plugin for Firefox, though: you may want to inform your readers that the installer barfs on 2003 Server, which I run as my desktop OS for development. I'm getting pretty fed up with apps refusing to install on a Server OS just because of bad (or in some cases intentional?) version checking. All developers know that the Windows Server OS (2003/Longhorn) is built from the exact same code-base as the associated Workstation (XP/Vista) OS, so why prevent certain apps from installing on Server?

After jumping through many hoops I got WMP 11 working on 2003 Server, but why should this be hard? As a result, IE shows WM videos just fine but Firefox doesn't, and when I try to install the WM plugin for Firefox its installer says "Server OS not supported" - WHY?!?!

Grrr. Just had to vent a bit - you can probably tell this isn't the first time I've come across this totally pointless restriction. Thankfully we developers have Orca at our disposal (no, not the next version of Visual Studio, the excellent MSI editing tool that's in the Windows SDK - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/255905 ), and after a little tweak of the MSI file's version check values most of these silly apps can be installed on 2003 with no negative side-effects. What a pain, though!