erratic response

[Dave A]

Really interesting. There is a significant difference on how they progressively handle the HTML.

First, clearly, there is a massive delay on the right hand column now that wasn't there before. Applies to both viewers. The content is arriving at the same speed so firefox isn't faster from that point of view. But it "feels" like Firefox is faster because of the way content is displayed on the fly.

Firefox displays the content for each table cell (think column for folks more familiar with spreadsheets than HTML page layout coding) as soon as its got it - therefor you've got something to read in the meantime and the lag is less irritating. When the right column content arrives, there's a shuffling of format to display it now that it's finally in. At first I thought the right hand column wasn't going to show!!

IE7 waits for the HTML contents of a complete row before it displays what it's got so far. In this case the entire thread, most of the stuff at the bottom of the page, and the right column. This makes for this long pause when nothing seems to happen.

Time to comment out bits of code and find the cause...

[I Robot]

Hmmm. And the server load times are cooking - from 0.04 to 0.11 which is quite acceptable. Looking closely the culprit is obvious - say bye bye to intelligent Amazon. And an impressive score for Firefox. With IE7 you can't tell what is causing the delay in this case.

[Dave A]

v3g load speeds all over the place isn't helping evaluating a difference with the substitute. I'll say this for Firefox - at least you've got something to get on with while the rest of the page is loading. This definitely makes for less stressful browsing when using slower connections.

[duncan drennan]

Just a note, I'm still seeing the problem in IE7. When I ran the test earlier (1min vs 7s) that was the approx time for the entire page to load everything - sidebars, text, etc.

[Dave A]

Post 11 explains the nature of the problem (probably badly but it's in there). There is a difference in behaviour between Firefox and IE that in this case is significant.

I'm going to test if moving the navigation to the left hand side helps. Otherwise we're going to have to drop the right hand column from the thread area.

BTW what speed connection have you got. 1 min 7 sec for a page load is slooowww.

We can also look at cleaning out some of the code - maybe the quick jump menu and the posting rules at the bottom, for example. I don't know how many people use them and the quickjump menu is a fair pile of code which is basically coming down with every page request.

[duncan drennan]

BTW what speed connection have you got. 1 min 7 sec for a page load is slooowww.

I think you missed me there, IE took around 1 minute to load the entire page (i.e. everything was finished and loaded correctly), Firefox took about 7s (again everything loaded). I'm on iBurst and regularly get speeds of 80kB/s (but not ever below 25kB/s).

I understand the differences in the layout engines (it's what I mentioned at the start of this).

Both browsers have erratic load times (and it is definitely something in the right hand column). How about removing everything except for the Navigation bar, then slowly add things back and see what happens?

I think it is really important to resolve (or remove) this issue before tonight's post party.

[Dave A]

The only thing that is pulling from off-site in the right hand column is the second box down. I could comment it out as a trial, but I've been examining the page load quite carefully.

The threads essentially have a big HTML payload which has to be delivered first before the right hand column content starts coming in. Payload wise the HTML content of the right hand column is pretty small, but coming in at the end it causes the IE viewing pleasure problem.

The intermittent big delays last night were due to SAIX - international connectivity issues that seemed to affect most services, apparently. Came and went. Certainly a poor night to do comparitive benchmarking and probably the reason for the 1 min 07 page load.

[duncan drennan]

I just want to pick up on this IE problem again - I really feel it is a big issue and will cause people to think that the site is borked.

I think there are a couple of things at play here, I realise that there may be specifics on my side causing things to be amplified, but I don't think that is the root of the problem. There was a definite point in time where things changed.

If you hold shift and press reload and roughly measure the time for ALL elements to load it is approx 1 (one) minute for both IE and Firefox. Firefox wins from a user perception perspective because it displays elements as it loads them, IE just sits around until everything is loaded (except the top navbar etc. show quickly...??).

Firefox also wins when a page is loaded after the first load due to its aggressive caching policy, so the next time you go to the page it will only download the main content, instead of all the elements, resulting in even faster download times.

I truly believe that that type of behaviour is driving people away from using this site - imagine how it is over a modem line!

Can admin possibly try taking out the adverts in the right hand column so we can try to fix the load time issue? I believe it is really critical.

[I Robot]

The problem is at its worst when viewing threads - so I've disabled the column in threads.

Let's see how the browsing experience is now before we look at disabling it elsewhere.

[duncan drennan]

Okay, insteresting result. It is certainly loading the main content faster, but to finish loading everything still takes quite a while. Maybe the culprit lies elsewhere....

The way I test is to refresh (holding shift) a link which goes directly to a post. When the browser "jumps" to the correct post I accept that all the content is loaded.

I'm using this link, http://www.theforumsa.co.za/forums/s...=2733#post2733

For now the content is loading faster - big plus