49 seconds

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1

I just ‘refreshed’ a page on eBay seen through Firefox 2.0.0.20 on my G4 Dual 450, OSX 10.4.11

Time taken for the refresh to reload the page fully?..49 seconds. Just what you need for snappy eBay bidding :wink:

Time taken to open a new window in same browser?..about 15 seconds.

Time taken for the scroll bar to ‘engage’ and respond to mouse direction?..normally about 5 seconds. Ditto this time to try and trype in the address bar.

Things aren’t much better in Safari (rarely used because it can’t display all kinds of modern presentation forms).

Browsing was always pretty naff on a Mac in my opinion, but this is ludicrous. What might be causing it?

ps. http://www.broadbandspeedchecker.co.uk/ (not viewable in Safari) says I’m getting download of 4040kbps!

Hugh

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2

On 5 May 2009, at 21:22, hugh wrote:

Browsing was always pretty naff on a Mac in my opinion, but this is
ludicrous. What might be causing it?

Can you run FF 3 on Tiger?

Or you could try the latest Camino instead.

Other than that, I really don’t know. Sorry. =o(

Heather

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3

What might be causing it?

Not enough RAM for whatever you have running at the time.

Sometimes you’ll need to log out and in again or even reboot to fix
things if that’s the problem, depending on what apps are involved.

k

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4

Wow. Well, all sorts of things contribute to the time it takes for a
page to display. In Firefox, you can install Firebug (http://getfirebug.com
) and use it to see a trace of all the elements in your page and how
long they took to load using the Net tab.

In Safari, you can use the Network Timeline portion of the Develop
menu to the same effect. If you don’t have the Develop menu enabled
(Safari preferences, Advanced tab, Show Develop menu in menu bar) then
do so. Then look at the Network Timeline inspector.

Oh, and if you need 15 seconds to show a new window, what’s in that
window? If that’s the time to show a blank new tab, then that’s
something seriously wrong with your Mac. But if it’s 15 seconds to
load your home page again, that could still be the network.

Walter

On May 5, 2009, at 4:22 PM, hugh wrote:

I just ‘refreshed’ a page on eBay seen through Firefox 2.0.0.20 on
my G4 Dual 450, OSX 10.4.11

Time taken for the refresh to reload the page fully?..49 seconds.
Just what you need for snappy eBay bidding :wink:

Time taken to open a new window in same browser?..about 15 seconds.

Time taken for the scroll bar to ‘engage’ and respond to mouse
direction?..normally about 5 seconds. Ditto this time to try and
trype in the address bar.

Things aren’t much better in Safari (rarely used because it can’t
display all kinds of modern presentation forms).

Browsing was always pretty naff on a Mac in my opinion, but this is
ludicrous. What might be causing it?

ps. http://www.broadbandspeedchecker.co.uk/ (not viewable in Safari)
says I’m getting download of 4040kbps!

Hugh

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5

If that’s the time to show a blank new tab, then that’s something
seriously wrong with your Mac.

Fortunately this is far more likely to be transient RAM capacity
problems. Sometimes I experience this sort of thing - but only when
I’ve run certain seriously RAM-hungry apps doing certain things.
Usually, quitting helps - but if not, rebooting clears it up
completely.

k

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6

Well, I quit Firefox and rebooted, then cleared the cache and everything…the started again.

OK, definite improvement, about 15 seconds to get the main eBay page and 5 seconds to open a new (blank) window. I imagine as I open more tabs and the cache builds up, it will slow down again…requiring frequent cache emptying (cache seems a completely useless feature in this case!)

One of the worst offenders is the back button in FF…you’d think you were just nipping back to that recently viewed page, but it often takes 20+ seconds to load.

While all this loading is going on, I watch the status bar (for something to do!) and see endless ‘waiting for’ and ‘transferring’ and ‘reading ebay.include.static’ messages (the latter being adverts I assume). Database driven sites suck, and straight html ones of my own design aren’t much better.

The broadband download speed is obviously there, but the throughput to screen is up a creek, sir.

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7

(cache seems a completely useless feature in this case!)

If you are short of RAM space then yes, it will be
counter-productive. How much do you have?

k

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8

I know that Firefox is a super resource-hog. It makes the fans roar in my girlfriend’s iMac. What I always do is use XSlimmer to slim down what I don’t need out of an app and it seems to help considerably reduce the problem.

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9

Hugh, I’m inclined to think that’s something’s up with your Mac with
these sort of speeds. Opening the eBay page took 6 seconds until fully
loaded on my Mac, also no problem opening the speedchecker page in
Safari. In fact, am I the only person who doesn’t have too many issues
with Safari?
Trev

On 5 May 2009, at 21:22, hugh wrote:

Time taken for the refresh to reload the page fully?..49 seconds.
Just what you need for snappy eBay bidding :wink:
Time taken to open a new window in same browser?..about 15 seconds.
Time taken for the scroll bar to ‘engage’ and respond to mouse
direction?..normally about 5 seconds. Ditto this time to try and
trype in the address bar.
Things aren’t much better in Safari (rarely used because it can’t
display all kinds of modern presentation forms).
Browsing was always pretty naff on a Mac in my opinion, but this is
ludicrous. What might be causing it?
ps. http://www.broadbandspeedchecker.co.uk/ (not viewable in Safari)
says I’m getting download of 4040kbps!
Hugh

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10

On 6 May 2009, at 08:02, Trevor Reaveley wrote:

Hugh, I’m inclined to think that’s something’s up with your Mac with
these sort of speeds. Opening the eBay page took 6 seconds until
fully loaded on my Mac, also no problem opening the speedchecker
page in Safari. In fact, am I the only person who doesn’t have too
many issues with Safari?
Trev

No, you’re not alone - I mostly stick with Safari, except when testing
sits across several browsers. I rarely have problems. And Ebay loads
in less than 5 secs on an early Intel Imac.

Colin

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11

I’m inclined to think that’s something’s up with your Mac

I’d still like to know how much RAM is installed and what apps tend
to be running. OS X can perform really badly and erratically if it
doesn’t have enough RAM for its needs.

k

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12

768 RAM, and usually programmes like Freeway, Word, Thunderbird (email), Smultron, Adobe Reader, and sometimes Photoshop (although I do try and turn this off whenever possible as I imagine it’s a bit heavy on resources). Might be a variation of this with Freehand open instead of Photoshop or Freeway.

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