MonoTouch.Dialog: Setting Image of StyledStringElement in Background

Question

My app calculates the Image of the StyledStringElement and this process takes a good amount of time. It's all done locally.

How can I do something like this pseudo code:

myElement.Image = PlaceHolderImage; 
myElement.GoGetTheImageFromSomeLongRunningTask = GetImageFromSomeFuntionThatWillTakeTime();

Answer 1

You can use something like this (not tested):

myElement.Image = PlaceHolderImage;
ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkItem ((v) =>
{
    var image = GetImageFromSomeFunctionThatWillTakeTime ();
    BeginInvokeOnMainThread (() =>
    {
        myElement.Image = image;
        myRoot.ReloadData ();
    });
});

Note that this assumes that GetImageFromSomeFunctionThatWillTakeTime can actually be executed on a secondary thread. You can easily test this by using the current MonoTouch beta (5.3.2), since you'll get an exception if you do something that's not allowed on a secondary thread.