X-Win32 features several major improvements in performance due to caching of window contents by default. You will quickly see that this results in major performance advantages, particularly on slow connections where redrawing a window after moving it can take up to 30 seconds. X-Win32 avoids this redrawing altogether, resulting in much smoother application use on slow connections. A few of the cases where these improvements can be seen are listed below, followed by two movies showing X-Win32 with window caching and X-Win32 without window caching swapping two web browser windows back and forth.
X-Win32 Performance Improvements Due to Window Caching
Switching between windows with Alt-Tab (when one window is in front of the other) is instantaneous (i.e. there is no network traffic)
Minimizing and restoring windows is instantaneous (i.e. there is no network traffic)
Moving a window is instantaneous (i.e. there is no network traffic)
Dragging one window over top of another window does not cause the bottom window to redraw (i.e. there is no network traffic)
When opening a window menu, the menu is typically drawn only once then hidden/shown on later occasions
When closing a window menu, the underlying window redraws the covered area immediately (i.e. there is no network traffic)
X-Win32 with window caching example- swapping two Firefox windows is fast!
X-Win32 without window caching example- swapping two Firefox windows is much slower.
Test Details
Video format: 10 frames per second
This was for optimal size of the videos
This results in the Alt-Tab window apearing on the video for longer than it did during the test
The video was scaled down to fit in a 320 x 240 pixel video player
Alt-Tab was pressed and released as soon as the previous window swapping was complete (i.e. the window at the top was completely redrawn and enabled)
In X-Win32 with window caching, this was about every 0.5 seconds (6 swaps in 3 seconds)
In X-Win32 without window caching, this was about every 1.3 seconds (6 swaps in 8 seconds)
Each window was approximately 1024 x 768 pixels, a fairly typical web browser size
Default settings were used for both versions
In X-Win32 with window caching, this means that Backing Store was set to When Requested and Allow alternative window manager was enabled
In X-Win32 without window caching, this means that Backing Store was set to When requested
Note: these options are the same, except for the option that enables the high-performance mode in X-Win32 with window caching.
The remote operating system was SuSE Linux 9.3 running under VMWare on the same Windows XP machine that was hosting X-Win32
The X-Win32 session was using StarNetSSH with X11 Forwarding enabled
