Browsers Options

[dvandorn]

I had been noticing that while it has been working just fine for every other website I visit, Internet Explorer was really bogging down on any Invision Board site -- most specifically, UMSF. It was taking a good 30 seconds to move from one page to another. I'm certain it's an issue with IE on my own machine, since I can access UMSF nice and fast on other machines.

So, when I went out to download the latest Google Earth update (complete with 3D Mars!), I found the GE update link also included an option to dl Google Chrome. So, I downloaded it.

This thing just rips through UMSF! Very fast page-turns. Looks just fine and nothing I've run across here yet has failed to load.

So, while I still use IE for most of my browsing, I'm now using Google Chrome exclusively for UMSF.

Wondering if anyone else has had a similar experience?

-the other Doug

[helvick]

I use Chrome about 90% of the time these days because it is fast and very uncluttered - the one major problem I have with it is that it doesn't have the sort of finegrained control over saved credentials that Firefox does. It's Javascript engine is very fast - which makes script heavy websites a pleasure to use rather than the swimming in treacle experience I get for he same sites with IE7.

That said your specific problem with IE is possibly an indication of either a broken plugin of some sort or a virus infection of some sort and you might want to try and clean it up. Unfortunately cleaning the crud out of IE can be hard.

Annother advantage that Chrome has is that it installs entirely within a user context on Windows machines which means that it has a very light footprint and it can be installed by users with restricted privileges. That's is a major plus for me as I am very often stuck working on business systems where I'm seriously constrained by security policy and I hate IE with a passion.

[Fran Ontanaya]

Invision boards use a lot of styling and Javascript code. Internet Explorer hasn't got a stellar performance in that area, as it tries to be backwards compatible with its own old versions --ask a web designer about IE6 standards if you want to see hair turning white in real time. Chrome has a specially tinkered engine, since many Google apps are Javascript-heavy, and has separate processes for each tab, which should make better use of hyperthreading/multicore CPUs.

Also, the cache of a long running IE will be bigger and more fragmented than a fresh install of another browser. A slow down can be a sign of malware too.

On low spec machines, big browsers like IE and Firefox are somewhat hungry for CPU and RAM. The "H3v" browser uses fewer resources, renders CSS and runs ECMAScript, the standard version of Javascript. It still doesn't beat elinks on Linux, though (I just checked, and UMSF is quite usable on it).

[imipak]

I just checked

Good grief, so it does!

Full disclosure: I'm biased; I've been using Firefox since the early days of the naked gecko exe, and I've got my name in the (extended) credits (just for submitting bug reports, not coding, I hasten to add.)

I'm using the "minefield" nightly build (Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.2a1pre) Gecko/20090225 Minefield/3.2a1pre), and I've got no latency issues at all on a Lenovo R61 Thinkpad. Javascript performance has been really snappy since Tracemonkey landed in (I think) Firefox 3.1 . Usability of stuff like Gmail, Google maps and some AJAX-y apps at work is noticeably better. MSIE? I love it! It pays my salary... (my employer mostly fights spam and malware, mostly emanating from malware-riddled Windows boxes pwned through IE vulnerabilities. )

[Guest_Sunspot_*]

My PC is pretty ancient and the only one that seems to be fast is Firefox 2. Firefox 3 is very sluggish. I noticed Book mark menus open instantly in v2 but there is a delay in v3.

[MahFL]

Yesterday I noticed after I clicked mark all boards read and return to index, the page was constantly refreshing every 1/3 second or so. Anyone notice the same ?
It's still doing it today too.
I am using Firefox 17.0.
Thanks.

[maschnitz]

Yeah I noticed that too; and ditto, FF17 beta (on OSX). I suspect a bug in FF rather than the board software, FWIW, but the next post might prove me wrong.

[nprev]

Thanks for the reports. It's being investigated.

[helvick]

I can't replicate the issue with any of these:

Stable\Production Browsers:
Windows:

Chrome ( v22.0.1229.94 )
Firefox 16 IE 9 ( v9.0.8112)
Safari ( 5.1.7)

iOS:

Safari ( IOS6 )
Chrome ( v21.0.1180.82)

Beta\Dev Builds (Windows)

Chrome Dev (Canary) ( v24.0.1296.0 )
FireFox Dev ( Aurora ) ( v18.0a2 )
Firefox Beta ( v17.0 )

This may be an OSX Firefox specific issue as v17.0 for Windows seems fine for me, although the fact that I'm an Admin might change things, I'll check out a test user shortly. There seems to be an issue with the "Read\Unread" Flag icon on FF that I'm going to look into but I can't replicate the refreshing issue.

[helvick]

And for completeness (at least for the major Windows \ IOS browsers) I can't replicate this with a normal user account on FireFox v17.0 either. Possibly it's OSX only, or there is an upstream problem.

If this is an OSX FireFox beta issue it might be worth testing the OSX Dev version to see if it has already been resolved, if not a bug report might be a good thing to submit.

[maschnitz]

FWIW it's still happening for me (just checked). Interestingly, it does not repeat if I'm logged out. It only exhibits while I'm logged in. Deleting cookies only logged me out, and it exhibited when I was back in.

So perhaps it's a combination of factors: OSX, IP Board, FF 17, some user setting (pick 2 of 4? 3 of 4?).

Feel free to rake the coals on my user settings if you have access, helvick.

I'd look into it more but I've got my own software to manage. Good luck.

[helvick]

I've been digging through some logs ( curiosity got the better of me) and both you and MahFL display a very similar pattern of requests, both of you are using FireFox v17 but he's not on OSX so we can remove the OS from the list of suspects.

In both cases something happens ( you tell the board to mark everything as read) which results in the current page becoming invalid ( there are no items to display) IP.Board issues a 302 temporarily redirecting you back to the index ( which is correct and expected) but in both your cases that then results in a number of repeated requests from your client for the same page, rather than the single request that happens in the other examples I've looked at. The only other "users" that exhibit this pattern are all search engine spiders. My suspicion would now be either that some plug in on your browser is causing a problem, or that there is some sort of intervening agent that is messing with your traffic. To be honest though I've no real idea why it might be happening, and I tried again and can't replicate it on my end - my FireFox v17 gets the 302 error and only sends back a single request from the redirect.

[maschnitz]

Ah, think I got it. It's the "autocorrect DST" setting, under "Control Panel" > "Board Settings". If I turn it on with FF17, it'll do the infinite redirect. If I turn it off, it stops.

I noticed because the hours kept ticking over - 5:00, 6:00, 7:00, 8:00 ... .

In Firebug, you can see the full page HTML AND the 302 HTTP code, which is very odd. 302 redirect pages are typically much smaller than the full index page. If I had to guess, I'd say FF17 has changed how it's caching HTTP status codes on keep-alive connections. IP.Board is cracking open a semi-permanent AJAX open connection, presumably to handle live updates to threads. That 302 must be "sticking".

Someone will fix this, somewhere between Mozilla and IP.Board. It's just a question of when. I'd try to repeat it if you can, then keep an eye on it. This'll make a mess if FF17 gets to release and it's still there. (Worst case - force that "autocorrect DST" flag off for everyone.)

[MahFL]

I am on FF17 and still have the problem.

[maycm]

Slightly off topic but relevant nonetheless, do the members have any advice regarding accessing the forums through a mobile (Android) device?

Navigating and reading is pretty much a nightmare so I tend not to even try generally, but I came across an App named Tapatalk which seems as though it would reformat things into a more manageable format.

Has anyone used this or something similar, or are there plans on the horizon for the site to be optimised for mobiles?