Hey all.

As I've been playing around with my Pronto, I have realized that the ORDER of stuff on the screen serves TWO useful purposes.

The first on is obvious, if you have a large graphic or button, they putting a different button TO THE FRONT will allow it to be visible over the larger graphic.
(However, this is not encountered very often - especially if you have a simple non-cluttered display.)

The second one is a lot more subtle, and this is what I wanted to discuss.

I have a couple of devices where I need two different screens for control. Eg My DVD has two main screens, one with a cursor pad and a transport pad, one with a cursor pad and a numeric pad.
The cursor pads are in the IDENTICAL position on both screens, so the only real differences are the top half of the screen which contain the transport pad and the number pad.

I was noticing a significant delay when switching between these two screens.
I soon realized that by putting the DIFFERENT buttons (ie the transport or numbers) and the BACK of the screen caused them to get drawn FIRST.
Thus when I switch screens, these buttons pop up immediately, while the cursor pad (which is identical) continues to be drawn, but is not noticable.

SO, MY POINT IS:
By putting button on the bottom (SEND TO BACK function) will get them to be the first items drawn when you switch to that screen, so they will pop up quicker.

Okay, so it's a minor point, but until the pronto has the built in P4 processor, we have to work around the slow processor that's inside.

-=Nick=-

So you're saying that because the identical buttons will redraw first, the panel jump delay will be less noticeable?

Does it matter that much? lol

I agree Matt. It's like those people who complain how much slower a HP548 is than an IPaq (PDAs). I mean . . . REALLY ! ! ! . . . are a few nano-seconds THAT important?
Is the "re-drawing" time realy gonna make you give up your Pronto and go back to 10 remotes on your coffee table?

Nick;

I'm not critisizing you in any way, here. Your posts on this Forum have been exemplary! If I remember correctly, you were making these detailed and insightful observations about the minutiae of ProntoEdit even before you owned a Pronto! You are certainly an assett to the Remote Central Family!



MIKE

The speed of the panel redraw depends greatly on how the icon was encoded: compressed or uncompressed. compressed takes less memory but draws a lot slower. If you have a lot of compressed icons, it will significantly slow down panel redraws.