Retrieve multiple images from server quickly

Question

For my BlackBerry application, I am using a single thread to retrieve images from the server one at a time. My application has a number of images and it takes too long to load all the images. How can I speed this up?

Answer 1

Use multiple threads instead of one. Also, if this is a server that you control, consider pre-sizing the images for the target devices or having the device send its size to the server to generate and cache device specific images.

Answer 2

If these are static images, you can also do something like CSS sprites - stitch them all together into one big image, then in code you display the portion of the large image that corresponds to the original image you want.

The last two arguments to Graphics.drawImage(...) indicate where to start drawing from the original image, and that's how you would select the part you want.

Answer 3

@Peter Threads on a mobile phone is a bad idea. Firstly threading on phones suck! secondly phones can't really handle more then one http connection at a time stuff bombs out.

@Userbb You can do sneeky things like stream them via a socket connection OR include multiple images in a single http request (creating a connection and http headers have overhead).

and also deff do what @peter suggested about resizing serverside.