Question

In a nutshell, I’m trying to display an animated GIF in a webview. This webview is in a list item. So, there is a listview of different gifs.

I’m setting the gifs on the listview like so:

View v = convertView;
if (v == null || position == 1) {
    LayoutInflater vi = (LayoutInflater)getSystemService(Context.LAYOUT_INFLATER_SERVICE);
    v = vi.inflate(R.layout.routine_exercise_item, parent, false);
}
TextView t = (TextView)v.findViewById(R.id.routine_exercise_num);
t.setText(getResources().getString(R.string.other_exercise) + " " + (position));

t = (TextView)v.findViewById(R.id.routine_exercise_description);
t.setText(mitems.get(position).description);



WebView anim = (WebView)v.findViewById(R.id.routine_exercise_gif);
anim.loadUrl("file:///android_asset/" + mitems.get(position).imagePath);
anim.setBackgroundColor(0);

I’m doing this inside getView of an ArrayAdapter<> subclass.

Everything loads just fine and the gif works… However, as soon as it’s displayed, my heap grows like crazy. It only takes 30-45 seconds for the heap to hit 32MB on my EVO 3d and crash.

I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong for such a memory leak to happen.

Any tips?

Answer 1

Oof. A WebView per ListView item? Yeah, they’re heavy. I don’t necessarily see anything that would cause the behavior you’re seeing, but utilizing a WebView just to show a GIF is a bit overkill. Take a look at this tutorial on a View subclass that uses android.graphics.movie to display animated GIFs. Might be lighter than WebViews.