Offscreen Buffer

Using an offscreen buffer can be part of an app developer's flicker-prevention strategy. Game canvases always provide an offscreen buffer. MIDP implementations provide it, even when the device does not support double buffering. A regular canvas, in contrast, need not have an offscreen buffer. (See for more information.) Use the offscreen buffer as the single source for what is rendered on the screen.

MIDP Implementors

Strongly Recommend: By default, paint the game screen with the contents of the offscreen buffer.

app Developers

Strongly Recommend: Put your app's initial game-screen content (such as a Splash screen or the initial Game screen) into the offscreen buffer before making the game canvas visible. The offscreen buffer is initially filled with white pixels. If you wait until after the game canvas is made visible to put content into the offscreen buffer, the user will initially see a blank screen. Users could perceive this as a performance problem, or as a broken app.