[mapguide-users] Re: fusion viewer performance vs basic viewer

[Trevor Wekel]

I agree with Jackie's comments.  Modern browsers - Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer 9, and to some extent even Safari on iPad and iPhone can handle fairly heavyweight javascript applications like Fusion and OpenLayers.  Internet Explorer 8 and below have poor javascript processing capabilities and are less effective with Fusion and OpenLayers.

I have been discussing a next generation MapGuide Viewer with a few of my clients.  I would like to incorporate the following features into a new viewer:

- Client side handling of properties and tooltip display without a round trip to the server
- Client side rendering of vector data
- Support for 2.5D rendering (perspective and elevation).  This would be a "stretch" goal.

Moving more of the processing client side will improve scalability and end user performance.  This is what "old MapGuide" did and it worked. 

This new viewer should support all required browsers and mobile devices.  If we specifically exclude Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) and below, we could leverage Javascript/SVG/HTML5 to create a new viewer.  If we still need to support IE8, then we would have to use Adobe Flash/AIR.  From a development perspective, dropping IE8 and using OpenLayers/Fusion as the base for a new viewer would be the fastest path to implementation.  As far as I know, 3D is not on the OpenLayers roadmap.  Adobe Flash/AIR does support 3D.
 
I would be surprised if Autodesk was working on this internally and even more surprised if they open sourced it.  However, we do have enough developers in the open source community that could collaborate on and deliver a project like this.

If the community gets behind MapGuide (financially), it will not die.  In fact, it would be an even bigger asset to your GIS/Geospatial business.  No licensing fees do matter, especially in a contracting economic environment.

Regards,
Trevor

-----Original Message-----
From: mapguide-users-bounces at lists.osgeo.org [mailto:mapguide-users-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Jackie Ng
Sent: September 23, 2011 10:06 AM
To: mapguide-users at lists.osgeo.org
Subject: [mapguide-users] Re: fusion viewer performance vs basic viewer

Fusion is really heavy with javascript and demands a modern browser for
optimal performance. IE7 does not classify as a modern browser.

>From our experience, the primary bottleneck is the legend widget and its
woefully inefficient method of retrieving legend icons, which is magnified
with the number of layers you have. You do not see the issue in the AJAX
viewer because 

My github fork (https://github.com/jumpinjackie/fusion-multimap) has
addressed the map loading and legend performance issues, but sadly this
solution uses techniques that are only supported by a modern browser. I have
yet to port these changes back to the official fusion repo due to other
changes to support multiple maps being broken in fusion trunk. The two
features are somewhat intertwined, making it somewhat hard to cleanly port
over, especially when one part is absolutely broken.

If you *really* have to use IE, make it at least IE8, but if you can you
should really go for IE9. It is actually a half-serious attempt at a modern
web browser from Microsoft. In actual fact, IE9 actually performs better
than Firefox/Chrome from my tests with both Fusion and AJAX viewers. I was
actaully blown away when I saw the AJAX viewer load in a blink in IE9, where
it took several seconds on Firefox and Chrome.

So I would only go with Fusion if you can standardize on IE9/Firefox/Chrome.
These are the browsers with enough grunt to handle the javascript. If this
is not possible, then you probably have no choice but to stay with the AJAX
viewer. Not that it's a bad thing, the AJAX viewer is tried and tested.

- Jackie

--
View this message in context: http://osgeo-org.1803224.n2.nabble.com/fusion-viewer-performance-vs-basic-viewer-tp6824506p6824779.html
Sent from the MapGuide Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
_______________________________________________
mapguide-users mailing list
mapguide-users at lists.osgeo.org
http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/mapguide-users