Warning: FireFox renders slow like a turtle in a coma

[mouser]

Since i've started using firefox more and more i've noticed that on long forum threads the difference in loading/rendering time for a page seems like it can be hugely slower than rendering in IE (i'm talking like 20x slower).

Now this may be because i have plenty of extensions loaded - i'm not sure, but the difference in painful and not cool.

Does anyone know any benchmarking pages on different rendering speeds of the current crop of browsers?

Before you opera nut jobs post a reply, yes i know opera is fast like a track star.. I may try operat again next..

[dk70]

You think repeating same object/script/whatever a gazillion times to show a numerical difference would answer why Firefox is 20x slower? Forget about browser benchmarks. Judge from experience, like you have done. I browse a lot of forums so would change to IE in a flash if I had to live with general problems of this kind. Anyone would so may be there is a problem to be fixed? Open error console, sometimes point directly at problematic extension. List extensions, may be problem is known, being fixed. Many of them are buggy as hxxx though I have no idea what could cause this. Clean profile should not have problem of course, does it?

Lots of minor bugfixes in 2.0.1 which is close to release. May be try it out ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/2.0.0.1-candidates/rc3 but I doubt it will help.

[mouser]

i should say i'm still using FF 1.05.08

[dk70]

Should not matter - except you miss the little extra speed in 2. On a noticable and similar level as IE6 vs. IE7 to my eyes. Dont need benchmarks for proof. And a billion bugfixes of course. You could see problem fixed in 2. Strange things can happen, didnt Firefox use to have some scripting problem with SMF forum? Was going into loop trashing servers? You only see zzzzz on this SMF forum or does it go for phpbb, vB as well? Check SMF site if not. Many people should be screaming. Ive not tried 1.5 vs. SMF 1.1 so cant tell. Anyway, best way is to exclude. Clean profile will point finger at extensions, perhaps extension mix - or not.

user_pref("extensions.checkCompatibility", false);
Throw that line in user.js so all extensions will "work", dump new 2.0.1 zipfile into Firefox folder. Easy to upgrade. Cant really think of any reason not to. Most gadgets have been upgraded by now.

[f0dder]

Must be some extensions playing tricks, mouser.

FireFox rendering does seem a slightly tiny bit slower than IE, but not much, and I've only seen very seldomly, and only while scrolling up and down, up and down, up and down...

[tinjaw]

I too think you should first look at the extensions you have loaded as the problem. I'm not sure if simply disabling them will provide the same results as uninstalling them, but what happens if you disable all of the extensions you have installed?

[dk70]

f0dder try Smoothwheel http://smoothwheel.mozdev.org/ does magic for "rendering" feel once set up. A bit like Opera which sprints in comparison. Cant be worse than default. Probably best to untick "use smooth scrolling" in options. Not much effect anyway.

[f0dder]

Guess I should try that out...

I tend to hate "smooth scroll" stuff though, and always turn it off in IE and Opera. So if it's just adding some pixel/smooth scroll kind of thing, it's not for me.

[superticker]

Must be some extensions playing tricks, mouser.  FireFox rendering does seem a slightly tiny bit slower than IE, but not much,

I agree.  My FF 1.5.0.8 is very fast.  You never told us whether this slowness was due to excess page faults (most likely!), CPU time, I/O waits, or network slowness.  Can you fire up Procmon (Process Monitor from System Internals) and give us a screen shot of the Performance tab results for Firefox?  (How do you post a screen shot on this forum anyway?  I would post my Performance tab, but I don't know how.)

For my memory working set (on Firefox), I'm seeing 81,000K.  Yours will be somewhat higher if you have some extensions that hog memory.  If your working set is really large, then tell us more about your Page Fault delta (which will cause I/O waits).

You may be able to tweak some parameters in Firefox to reduce Page Faults, but you'll probably need to buy more memory chips when you do.  Uninstalling excess extensions may be better alternative.

[mouser]

i'm guessing its some extension i have loaded since i have so many.. basically when i load a long thread i can see the page growing longer as it renders more and more of it.. can take several seconds to load a long thread..

i'll try disabling extensions to see if i can find the culprit - ff is great about letting you easily enable and disable them thankfully.

[Carol Haynes]

I haven't got too many extensions in FF 2 and I actually find it marginally faster than IE 7 (one it is on the desktop - it does take longer for the initial app loading)

If I open lots of unread messages in TABS via the UNREAD POSTS page I certainly find it considerably quicker than IE 7 - IE's tabs are incredibly slow (to the point of almost being unusable for that purpose).

I regularly open upto 20-25 tabs all at once and FF wins hands down every time (irrespective of content).

[mouser]

i couldn't agree more about new tab opening - you said it well.  opening a new tab in IE is inexplicably slow to the point of being unusable.  i also love the options in the Tab Mix Plus extension.  1000x better than IE tabs.

[lanux128]

whenever i install Fx, i'd go for the custom install so that i can uncheck the Talkback option & DOM inspector.. not that it's proven to be faster or anything but so far i've had no complaints, even with Fx 2.0. also as advised by dk70, disable "smooth scrolling"..