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I'm curious what kind of speed folks are getting with these new forums. For my own experience, they're drastically slower than the older forums.
Using Firefox 3 and 3.5b4, I get page load times of around 20 seconds on average for a page to fully load. IE8 is slower still. This is on a 768 DSL connection.
Using the new Chrome browser, I get a more acceptable 2 second page load time on average. (Which clearly shows there's nothing wrong with my connection.)
That is a VAST difference. With other web sites, Chrome and Firefox display pages in very similar time frames. It's only with these forums that Firefox is slowed to a crawl. I wonder if any forum techies can chime in with theories as to why?
Jim Simon wrote on 2009-05-31 11:20:
Using Firefox 3 and 3.5b4, I get page load times of around 20 seconds on average for a page to fully load. IE8 is slower still. This is on a 768 DSL connection.
Using the new Chrome browser, I get a more acceptable 2 second page load time on average.
I wonder if any forum techies can chime in with theories as to why?
Caching. As Adobe is improving the caching mechanisms for the content on
these forums subtle differences in the caching algorithms of browsers
be
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Your remarks are justified Jim but we've been through all that in the early days of these Jive forums going live.
The Adobe people responsible have said they are aware of the speed problems and in some cases are attempting fixes. Other things seem to be "hard-wired" into the forum software and can't be changed.
There is a laborious process involved in attempting to get changes implemented by Jive.
Also I think Adobe is already two releases behind the current one!
Nobody seemed to realise when Jive was chosen that, while it is a nice pretty forum software for certain undemanding situations, it is just not up to the task of providing the standard of service we had with the Web X forums.
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Jim Simon wrote on 2009-05-31 11:20:
Using Firefox 3 and 3.5b4, I get page load times of around 20 seconds on average for a page to fully load. IE8 is slower still. This is on a 768 DSL connection.
Using the new Chrome browser, I get a more acceptable 2 second page load time on average.
I wonder if any forum techies can chime in with theories as to why?
Caching. As Adobe is improving the caching mechanisms for the content on
these forums subtle differences in the caching algorithms of browsers
become more pronounced. For instance, all the CSS and images that belong
to the forums have been switched from invalidation based caching to
expiration based caching and are now cached for 30 days on some browsers
without rechecking the server on each page load. But not the user
avatars, because when a user changes his avatar you don't want that
cached for 30 days.
As a result even the way you are measuring exactly will make a huge
difference in what times you get. For instance, compare the results you
get in the following circumstances in Firefox 3 or 3.5b4.
1. Go to http://forums.adobe.com/community/general/forum_comments and
click a few threads to load the static content into your browser cache.
2. Open a new tab and direct that tab to
http://forums.adobe.com/community/general/forum_comments as well. This
should take about 5 seconds.
3. Go back to http://forums.adobe.com/community/general/forum_comments
and click F5. This should take about 12 seconds.
4. Clear your browser cache and go back to
http://forums.adobe.com/community/general/forum_comments. This should
take about 25 seconds.
The difference is that by reloading through F5 you implicitly instruct
the browser to invalidate parts of its cache. More then if you just open
a new tab to the same URL, less then explicitly clearing the cache. The
remaining speed difference between the fully cached instances of Chrome
and Firefox is probably because the rendering engine and the javascript
engine of Chrome are faster (and Chrome appears to use more simultaneous
threads to download images).
All of this can be observed by inserting a recording proxy between your
browser and the forums and analyzing the results.
Jochem
PS The times I mention are my average times recorded in 4 different
countries.
--
Jochem van Dieten
http://jochem.vandieten.net/
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To cut a long story short, they're slower... much slower... which is why, coupled with lack of NNTP support, a lot of serious, knowledgeable contributors to the forums have dropped out.. Yup... Double whammy!
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1. Go to http://forums.adobe.com/community/general/forum_comments and
click a few threads to load the static content into your browser cache.
2. Open a new tab and direct that tab to
http://forums.adobe.com/community/general/forum_comments as well. This
should take about 5 seconds.
3. Go back to http://forums.adobe.com/community/general/forum_comments
and click F5. This should take about 12 seconds.
4. Clear your browser cache and go back to
http://forums.adobe.com/community/general/forum_comments. This should
take about 25 seconds.
Here's what I noticed...
Using Chrome:
1. 2 seconds
2. 2 seconds
3. 19 seconds
4. 3 seconds
Using Firefox 3.0: (The below times are with 3.0. I recently found that 3.5b4 was even slower, giving me the average 20 second load times.)
1. 13 seconds
2. 13 seconds
3. 14 seconds
4. 14 seconds
Using Chrome, all seems to fit with the predictions until step 4. With the entire cache cleared, the page still loaded in 2 to 3 seconds. Why it took 19 seconds after the F5 (which according to you only clears part of the cache), and only 3 seconds after clearing all the cache, is a mystery.
Further, it would appear that Firefox isn't caching anything. Why I don't know. I tried doubling the size of the cache, going from 50 MB to 100MB, and repeated the 4 steps. No change in load times.
I do have some add-ons in Firefox on my main computer, so I went over to a second computer on the same network and tried the steps there with an unadulterated version of Firefox. (Secure as it may be compared to IE, however, I would still not recommend this practice. Most of the extensions I use are very necessary for base Internet safety and privacy, so much so that I feel they should all be built into Firefox by default.) Sure enough, the load times came out as predicted. Pages in general loaded in about 3 seconds. Hitting F5 reloaded in about 14 seconds. Clearing the cache fully took about 19 seconds to reload. So I guess one of my add-ons is causing a delay somewhere. My next step is to systematically try and locate the offending add-on. My main concern is that it not be one of those afformentioned necessary add-ons for privacy and security.
Thanks much for the thread to pull.
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Most of the extensions I use are very necessary for base Internet safety and privacy, so much so that I feel they should all be built into Firefox by default.)
I disagree. Going that route would end up with a bloated Swiss-army-knife application like Photoshop which kept absorbing 3rd party technology until it got to the state it's in now.
Independent developers should be encouraged not absorbed!
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Found the problem. One of the about:config settings was set to disallow the cache, essentially reloading every single page every single time. I turned that off and am now getting acceptable 2 to 3 second load times in Firefox 3.0. Thanks much for the insight.
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Going that route would end up with a bloated Swiss-army-knife application like Photoshop
I didn't necessarily mean the add-ons should be absorbed into the code. I mean the functionality they provide should be native to the browser and easily accessible via the 'Options' GUI, thus eliminating the need for those add-ons.
The ability to remove the referrer, for example. Or to stop redirects. And the cookie handling of CS Lite is how ALL browsers should do it by default. Things like that I consider basic to Internet security and privacy. They should be automatic, not add-ons.
But I disgress. The problem has been solved.
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John Joslin wrote:
Most of the extensions I use are very necessary for base Internet safety and privacy, so much so that I feel they should all be built into Firefox by default.)
I disagree. Going that route would end up with a bloated Swiss-army-knife application like Photoshop which kept absorbing 3rd party technology until it got to the state it's in now.
Independent developers should be encouraged not absorbed!
Opera doesn't need a million plugins, it's faster than FF with more (and better from what I've seen) features by default. If Firefox tried to do as much as Opera (just as fast), it would just say "EPIC FAIL" on load. OSS built by people living in their parents basements has a harder time competing with the highest quality professionally developed software!
Anyway, Chrome/Opera are a heck of a lot faster on these forums, without weird settings needed, it's true. These forums simply will not work in crappy IE here, it is that slow. You would think Jive would bother testing that. With Chrome, it's actually pretty quick (often <1 second honestly). Too bad Chrome = I dunno, prob 1% of Intarweb usars? Jive Clearspace = epic fail.
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Speed is still a big issue and is being worked on. I can't put all the blame on Jive. A lot of the content on the forum pages comes from Adobe. In the Web Crossing forums we did not have, for example, the current header and footer. Instead we had an image map GIF file that looked like an older version of the header and footer. I can't get away with doing that anymore. So not only are the Jive pages a bit heavier, the overall pages including items from Jive and Adobe are heavier.
I'm one of the luck ones who isn't seeing bad performance here (I'm located in Seattle). Works pretty quickly on the Adobe network and at home on Comcast cable. Very similar to the old forum speed. I'm using IE5 and Firefox on my PC and Firefox and Safari on my Mac in the office and Firefox and Safari on Macs at home.
The forum session timeouts/cookie issue is also a shared thing between Adobe and Jive. I think I've figured out one of the issues there, but it is going to require changes on both sides. There is an adobe.com cookie that is supposed to expire when the browser closes, but it appears to be living on for 24 hours. That might be why you can come in the next day and still be logged in, and then suddenly get dumped a few minutes later. The way I'm seeing it, you came in maybe 23.5 hours after the cookie was originally set and then it expires in 30 minutes and your hosed. So I've asked for that to be looked at. I'm also asking Jive to see if they can set an additional cookie on their side when they get information from the Adobe sign-in screen when the Remember Me checkbox is selected. That would be a cookie to automatically extend your session to help avoid the unexpected dump.
No ETA yet on these changes.
John
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These are the slowest forums I've seen, to be honest.
Admittedly, I'm browsing from Israel, but still, compare the speed of this to the speed of the following, very heavily used discussion board:
http://boards.fool.co.uk/index.aspx
That's just an example.
Even if we can't have NNTP, at least couldn't we have that sort of speed?
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Ariel,
Is that you?
Harbs
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Harbs: none other.
So, you're still braving these forums despite it all!
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email makes it somewhat palatable...
Harbs
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adobe-admin wrote:
Speed is still a big issue and is being worked on. I can't put all the blame on Jive. A lot of the content on the forum pages comes from Adobe. In the Web Crossing forums we did not have, for example, the current header and footer. Instead we had an image map GIF file that looked like an older version of the header and footer. I can't get away with doing that anymore.
John
Worded like that, it sounds like it is Jive's fault if you can't get away with doing things in a more efficient manner.
PJ: Not sure what Seamonkey is (was comparing to vanilla FF), but nm I don't want to change the subject from the SPEED problems of the evil Jive demons.
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You remeber when there was Netscape Communicator, Or Mozilla.
SeaMonkey is equivilent Mozilla/Communicator It is the all in one has Mail/News and Web browser, and dif have FTP dowload acapability though I haven't used it
The Browser portion is based on FireFox and the mail/news is same as in Thunderbird or Postbox.
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Ahh, okay, so basically it's a bunch of stuff that Opera has by default. Gotcha!
(hehe)
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Yes it is similar to Opera. in working so far as mail/news/browser.
I find it silly to have a seprate web browser and a sperate Mail/nes when I don't have to load two three applications to do the same work.
I do use FF when I want to do a specific task using browser without opening and load mail/news.
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adobe-admin wrote:
Speed is still a big issue and is being worked on. I can't put all the blame on Jive. A lot of the content on the forum pages comes from Adobe. In the Web Crossing forums we did not have, for example, the current header and footer. Instead we had an image map GIF file that looked like an older version of the header and footer. I can't get away with doing that anymore. So not only are the Jive pages a bit heavier, the overall pages including items from Jive and Adobe are heavier.
I'm one of the luck ones who isn't seeing bad performance here (I'm located in Seattle). Works pretty quickly on the Adobe network and at home on Comcast cable. Very similar to the old forum speed. I'm using IE5 and Firefox on my PC and Firefox and Safari on my Mac in the office and Firefox and Safari on Macs at home.
The forum session timeouts/cookie issue is also a shared thing between Adobe and Jive. I think I've figured out one of the issues there, but it is going to require changes on both sides. There is an adobe.com cookie that is supposed to expire when the browser closes, but it appears to be living on for 24 hours. That might be why you can come in the next day and still be logged in, and then suddenly get dumped a few minutes later. The way I'm seeing it, you came in maybe 23.5 hours after the cookie was originally set and then it expires in 30 minutes and your hosed. So I've asked for that to be looked at. I'm also asking Jive to see if they can set an additional cookie on their side when they get information from the Adobe sign-in screen when the Remember Me checkbox is selected. That would be a cookie to automatically extend your session to help avoid the unexpected dump.
No ETA yet on these changes.
John
I must commend you for working on it and possibly finding a problem.
I'm on the east coast. And use a 1mb Up or download DSL connection. Best I can get with my provider. But includes the DSL line and the Modem and Router/switch.
Me personally I haven't seen any excessive for me, slowdowns in two or three weeks. there was a time when first got started on this new system took more than 10-15 seconds to load.
But the sudden log out is aggravating. Looks like there could be a system that would note the click to reply and sett a 5 minute timer to allow finish of the reply and would stop when the post command was clicked.
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I am on my desktop computer at home and this reply page just took the better part of 15 seconds to load. I've mentioned it before, I'm on FiOS, WinXP Pro, SP3, on a P4, 1.5 GB ram.
I still have the issue with the backspace cursor in the reply window. Gads, it's so s ... l ... o ... w ... Is still close to 1 second per character backspace. I always over do the character count and end up having to retype text.
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for myself It averages two to three seconds and like I said I am a 1mb DSl line.
There must be a bottleneck between your connection and the adobe or Jive's connection.
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PjonesCET wrote:
for myself It averages two to three seconds and like I said I am a 1mb DSl line.
There must be a bottleneck between your connection and the adobe or Jive's connection.
Phillip,
I must say, that is annoying! Why do you think it's my connection? I am not the only one with these types of speed issues, nor do I only use one type of connection or computer. I have used 3 different computers (2 desktops, 1 laptop), one T1 connection from work, 1 FiOS connection from home and one wireless connection. All 3 have the same speed issues. All three have the slow backspace response in the reply window. I seriously doubt that it's only my system causing this problem!!
What times you are averaging is good for you. But your experience is not what many others are experiencing and I really don't appreciate the implication that if you have a good connection, then the rest of us should too! It's not all about you, you know?
Look, I don't mean to be offensive, but those sorts of dismissive statements just irk me!
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I know how you feel, it's really annoying when people seem to be almost blaming you for the problem. However, I do mention from time to time that I have very few speed issues, just to add to the information available to those trying to solve the problem. As with the old forums, JJ and I have very different experiences with forum speed, although we are both in the UK and not far apart. The trouble-shooters need to know what isn't causing the problems (such as location), to help them find out what is.
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Kath,
I couldn't agree more! I just don't want my speed issues dismissed as being my own system causing the problem when I am experiencing it over multiple machines and connections. Of course Phillip couldn't know my computer and connection situation, which is why I got so frustrated at the dismissal!
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Sorry if this was already mentioned, but maybe it's the configuration of the browser you're using? Have you tried Google Chrome?