Bernard

What is your workaround?

Try using "opaque" instead of "transparent". You might get lucky as it is a bit less CPU intensive. How many graphs do you have on the page?

I do not know the full theory behind it, but in practice, there seem to be a problem. At least this is what I was experiencing. It may not apply to all. On my machine, when showing 8..10 charts (that appear to be static after their first animation), it really eats 100% CPU. This is very noticeable in Safari (for windows) but firefox and others are also affected. In Safari, you just monitor the CPU and as you add more chart to the page, the CPU just goes up by about 5-10% per chart. Firefox 2.0.x has another issue which aggravates this: if too much cpu is used, it actually "semi-hangs" firefox (cannot resize window and cannot access menus but hyperlinks work and you can move the firefox window). "Patching" the fps to a reasonable level (I picked 20 fps) repaired all that instantly. Mocking with the .swf files "works" but is not an acceptable solution for me. For those that have the source (and the tool to edit it), just open the .fla file in Flash and change the fps setting when rebuilding the .swf file. But again, we would like to have it fixed correctly when we upgrade to future versions. Like a said, that fix does not work for all charts (like the Pyramid) because it seems the animation is fps-based (animation should always follow the the time, not the framerate).

I use a home-grown java tool based on a third-party library (JavaSWF2 - BSD license). This was just a proof of concept to test the theory. This is really easy to change from FusionChart standpoint. They only have to change a single parameter. At least that is true for most of the charts. (Some of them, like the Pyramid, is basing their "animation" on the framerate which explains why it got random speed in the first place (some browsers limit the framerate)). Now that we know it is easy to fix, I hope FusionCharts fixes it quickly.

OK, I "patched" Column2D.swf so it has a rate of 20 fps. Now I can display 40 of these on the same page in firefox with my CPU level around 6%. (still a bit high in my opinion, but this is much better than the previous 100% with firefox hanging) Regards, Bernard.

I also run into a similar problem with FusionCharts swf files and I do not have any problems with my own generated .swf files. I think I might have a clue at what is happening with FusionCharts swfs: It looks like the .swf files have been built with a rate of "120" (fps) which is really high. You should put something closer to "20". A rate of "20" makes nice animations "fluid enough" yet keeping the CPU usage low -- these are not games(!). Some browsers/flash plugins might decide to limit the rate but others don't. Please check the rates of your .swf files -- I did not do a full investigation, but I will try to "patch" your .swf files with a lower rate and see if it solves the problem. Bernard