Question

Im currently developing a program that uses a scrollable/zoomable image as the main user interface. It uses a canvas which is manipulated by a matrix to traverse a large area. Instead of loading a super large bitmap into memory, i wanted to employ a tile system to load 256 by 256 squares. My problem is that the app will lag when the images are being loaded into memory. I use a simple outer and inner for loop to load the tiles if they are null, and if the user zooms out to a certain extent the tiles all disappear and a lower res version of the whole image is shown. Ive been steered into the direction of asynchronous image loading, which seems like it would prevent the lag while the image loads into memory but i have no idea how to start this, and was wondering if anyone had any advice on how to generally asynchronously load bitmaps into the canvas. Thanks!

Answer 1

I simply use a second thread to do ANYTHING that could take some time to make sure that the UI is always nice and responsive. You may even want to lower the priority of that thread if the UI contains animation (like scrolling) to get rid of stuttering.

You could use a second Thread object that sends a message via a Handler when it’s done, or you can use AsyncTask.