Yesterday I finally made
TestF open to the public just before my talk at the
LFPUG that
ustwo kindly hosted. Thanks to everyone that attended and specially to
Tink for keeping alive the Flash scene in London for all these years!
So, what is TestF about?
Its aim is putting Flash devices to the test, highlighting strengths and weaknesses. Which one has more raw CPU power. Which one has better access to disk. Which one has better hardware acceleration. And so on.
In the studio we get new devices all the time, a few of them prototypes that have not been released yet so there's not much information available on the internet. So, is it fast? How's the GPU? Any noticeable problems? You simply don't know.
To help us get an initial feeling of what are we really dealing with we've put together
TestF, a simple set of tests that will push the device to see how far it can go. Tests for BitmapData, the drawing API, IO performance... And more on the pipeline.
Since you cannot make much out of the results of a few tests, we need people to run the test on their devices so we keep filling up the
open database. The more information we have, the better so we can discard edge cases where the test has been skewed for some reason.
So, ready for it? The simplest way is searching on the Android Market for "testf" and here's the
direct link. Alternatively, take a look to the
downloads page for more options.
There's a lot of stuff to be done:
* Review current tests and add many more (StageVideo, PixelBender, tweening...)
* Data visualization. Once we have a fair amount of data, we need clever ways of visualizing it.
* Device comparisons. Being able to select a few devices, a few tests and get the results filtered and graphs.
* The ability to add bespoke tests without recompiling the main app, so devs can add their own.
* Investigate iOS support.
* Throw in some design to the website, the app, etc.
TestF is open source so you can pop by the
github page to take a look to the code and
documentation.
Any help, comments, feedback much appreciated.
We are also eager for data, so if you can spare 2 minutes, download it from the market and run the test!
[UPDATE]
How could I FORGET?! Maaaassive thanks to my team of beta-testers for their feedback and patience. In no particular order:
Elecash,
Marcos,
Richard Leggett,
Xavi Beumala,
Jackson Dunstan and
Joan Llenas.
Next beer is on me guys!