| There are a few things you can do the squeeze the most performance out of Andromeda. You should try these suggestions one at a time to see what the speed improvement is, as well as what features you are loosing. Make sure that you know how to make a prefs file.
organize your collection
Sounds simple, but if you organize your collection into subfolders, that will improve load time as Andromeda will have fewer rows to draw on a single page.
turn off displayNew
The displayNew preference tells Andromeda to scan folders looking for new files. If it finds any, it automatically marks all folders containing them as 'new'. If you have an especially large collection this can be noticably slow. displayNew is off by default in versions 1.7.1 and up, and is on by default in all earlier versions.
useImageFiles
By default, Andromeda uses images stored as binary data within the script itself. You can gain an improvement by using normal image files.
- download the image icon files
- put them in the same folder with the script (the gifs are 'next to' the script)
- set useImageFiles to true
- if you want to put the images elsewhere, set imageFolderPath accordingly (ie /images/).
turn off the ID3 reader
If you're running the ASP version make sure that skipID3v1 is set to true (it is by default). You can also get an additional minor improvement by setting getID3info to false.
don't wrap it in a table
If you nest all of Andromeda within an enclosing table (see the integration page), that can degrade perceived performance, because your web browser will not be able to incrementally write rows, and will instead have to wait for *all* rows to be returned before writing the page.
using Nuke or phpWebSite?
The "don't wrap it in a table" issue discussed above most likely applies to you. Compare preformace by directly accessing Andromeda in 'standalone' mode. Rather than run Andromeda as a module or add-on, you might consider poping open a new window with your standalone Andromeda site.
turn off permitSearch
The search tool isn't that fast, especially on a big collection. Turning this off won't affect overall performance, but could help if somebody is searching while somebody else is browsing.
set localFilePlayback to true
If you run Andromeda on a standalone PC, you can get a boost by setting localFilePlayback to true (ASP version >= 0.018; PHP version >= 1.9.3). This instructs Andromeda to use local file paths rather than full urls in playlists, and can eliminate the caching of files.
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