Online Slowness - How to Speed Up a Mammoth Online Merged HTML5 Help System?

[Jared Hess]

Hello all,

Product and Project details:

• RH 2017 (13.0.2.334)
• Merged help system of about 20 help projects (~467 MB total when generated)
• HTML5 output

We are experiencing some slow speeds when loading in the merged help site from our online webserver. One user who has 20 Mbps download speeds, it took him about 11-12 seconds to load the site, and about 19 seconds before they get search results. (I'm sending out a survey in our company to get broader results, but I've seen slow loading and search speeds results from my computer as well and I have about 80 Mbps download speeds.)

For example, when I run the site through google's Page Insights (Desktop not Mobile-- Mobile is even slower), I get this:

Look at that "Time to Interactive" stat. Yikes! Anyone else see something similar on your large merged HTML5 sites?

I personally don't know what I can do on my end to optimize to increase speeds. This all seems to stem from how RH merges everything together with this particular layout.

Thoughts?

[Amebr]

I seem to remember reading years ago that it's to do with the merge code combined with the number of projects merged (getting slower with each project added) and I don't think there's really anything you can do about it beyond raising it with Adobe.

If you have google analytics enabled, you could check the Site Speed > Speed Suggestions page, to see what suggestions are offered. I can't help with that though, as I only just discovered it exists, and have to figure out why I don't have any data.

[Peter Grainge]

Can you share the output with me? I would like to upload it to my server and see if it is the same there. It would only be there for long enough to compare with your site and then it would be removed, a matter of minutes.

If you can share, you know how to send it. Also send a link to your server so that I can compare.

---

See www.grainge.org for free RoboHelp and Authoring information.

@petergrainge

[Jared Hess]

Hi Peter. Certainly. I sent you a private message with the links. Thanks again for your help.

Amebr, thanks also for your comment. I may look into Google Analytics. (We do have Application Insights enabled on our webserver which may help us track down some info as well, but I suspect this is indeed a RH issue and how they merge the child helps together and present that data.)

[RoboFan]

Anyone ever discover a solution to this issue? We're moving to MS Azure cloud hosting and experiencing painful slow to load and slow to return search results issues. We have 12 (1 parent, 11 child) merged projects, with 6k topics total. Speed is great when I run the output from my local machine. Issues only arise when it's hosted. I'm running RH 2020.5 and generating frameless output.

[Peter Grainge]

@RoboFan The obvious question is did you have this problem before going to Azure?

________________________________________________________
See www.grainge.org for free Authoring and RoboHelp Information

[RoboFan]

Trick question!

When our output was HTML4 (RH2015 or 2017?), we just placed it out on an internal network directory and staff opened it via a shortcut (no URL). No issues with speed performance.

Subsequent to that, we moved to HMTL5 (RH2017), and hosted it on a Microsoft IIS webserver (URL). Performance (relative to pervious environment) degraded. merged TOC took longer to load on first opening the site, search results took longer to load, etc.

We're now (RH2020.5) testing a hosting environment on a Microsoft (external) Azure cloud environment (URL). Performance is even worse than it is with the IIS webserver. (No changes in output.) It's not an issue for a separate, single project we're also testing. 

Dunno if anyone knows of ways to resolve this. Ideally, the externally hosted instance would be as snappy and quick (TOC load time, search results returned, etc.) as the instance I run (output to) on my local machine (where the output sits). Surely we aren't the only RH user to experience/come across this.

[Peter Grainge]

I think there will be some local versus server time differences but not to the level you are experiencing.

I have no experience of either of your hosting solutions. Do you have a webserver of your own that you can test on? I emphasise webserver rather than network server.

What is the size of the output? Maybe I could upload it to where my site is hosted to see how it performs, then quickly remove it?

________________________________________________________
See www.grainge.org for free Authoring and RoboHelp Information

[Jared Hess]

Hi RoboFan,

In April of this year, I did some evaluations with Search with my large merged help system, comparing my version, RH 2017, against RH 2020. I found that Search in RH 2020 (2020.4.173) was MUCH slower (by about 10x to 15x slower) than 2017. This is with my massive merged help system.

Bug is here:

https://tracker.adobe.com/#/view/RH-9068

Adobe reps were trying to get me to upgrade to 2020, but there was no way I would consider doing that with such a massive slow down. 

But earlier this month, Adobe said they fixed the slow Search issue in RH 2020 Update 6. I haven't re-tested it yet. I'd be interested to hear if updating to Update 6 speeds things up for you?

I hope that at least the Search is faster.

[RoboFan]

Peter,

We have 1 parent project and 11 child projects. Cumulative, merged output statistics:

• Size: 900MB
• Size on disk: 950MB
• Contains: 26,101 Files, 1,165 Folders

Jared,

Appreciate the info. It sounds like update 6 is supposed to be released later this month. I'll be sure to test it as soon as it comes out.

[Peter Grainge]

@RoboFan  If you want to send me a zip of the output, I can upload it and send you a link.

See the Contact page on my site and send the zip file as instructed there. That will give me an email address that I can send a link for the output once uploaded. You can then compare after which let me know and I will delete it.

________________________________________________________
See www.grainge.org for free Authoring and RoboHelp Information

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

@RoboFan - Update 6 is out now (Sept 2021). Give it a whirl with your project.

[RoboFan]

Well that was timely. Setting up a test enviro to see if there are any improvements. I'll report back (probably next week). Thanks!

[Jared Hess]

I retested the searching in RH 2020 on our massive merged help system, and they've fixed the bug that was causing the search to take so long. It's quite snappy now. There is still an initial load whenever you first launch the help, but after that searches seem quite good.

Most of the time...

Sometimes (often?), it just hangs. And you have to click Stop and then refresh the entire page to get things working again.

If you're lucky, it continues to work. If not, you get the above message again.

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Did you catch that recent discussion about configuring your web server to serve up the zipped form of results to browsers that request it? Enabling that seems to have improved performance rendering up results and pages.

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Found it - https://community.adobe.com/t5/robohelp-discussions/slow-search-times-for-robohelp-2020-using-framel...

[Jared Hess]

Thanks Jeff. I looked into that thread you posted.

We have a larged merged help system. All told, we have ~28 MB of uncompressed search_db.js files (~6MB if we use the compressed .gz files). The largest is 12.06 MB and compressed it's 3.91 MB.

However, the ability to use these compressed files appears to be enabled already on our webserver, so I assume that something else must be causing these occassional "This page is slowing down Firefox..." messages.