double buffering : Java Glossary

by Roedy Green ©1996-2008 Canadian Mind Products
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double buffering

a technique for being able to refresh the screen faster by using prerasterised off-screen images. Basically you create your images with createImage or fetch them off disk by asking MediaTracker to get them for you via MediaTracker.addImage. You need to make sure the disk images are loaded with MediaTracker.waitFor. Then once all your Image objects are in RAM you can render rapidly in succession with: this.getGraphics().drawImage(thatImage), 0, 0, this); Normally you spin the animation off to a separate thread.

You can’t use animated *.gif files in Java unless you decompose them yourself and use the double buffering technique.

Swing does double buffering for you automatically, though the AWT does not.

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