Although Flash provides bitmap support, it is primarily thought of as a vector animation tool. Vector content can be created and edited directly within the IDE, making vectors an obvious choice above bitmaps, which must be edited externally.
However, given the hardware constraints of mobile devices such as the iPhone, are vectors appropriate or should you consider using bitmaps in order to maximize performance?
Two FLAs have been provided for this recipe and can be found within the book's accompanying code bundle at chapter6\recipe1\.
Both perform a simple render performance test. Each attempts to render ten instances of an animating movie clip. After five seconds, the test will end and the average number of frames per second (FPS) that was achieved will be shown. The higher that number, the faster the rendering performance of the test.
The first FLA—recipe-vectors.fla—uses vector artwork for each of the movie clip's animation frames. The...