Hello. This is the strange behavor happend recently in our company. We use a centralized X-client computer and several dozens of X-terminals for the clerks. Everything works fine untill we upgraded our intranet web application.
the new web application is very slow on Mozilla (behavior described in the attached message) but fast on Opera / IE. However the web application have other problems with Opera, for IE because we use Linux X-terminal, we cannot do it. These X-terminals takes 30 seconds to open any page in the web application / any scrolling takes another 30 seconds, not acceptable at all! It took us several days to discover the reason of slowdown. It's clear 1) when the page is slow, X uses much more CPU resource then mozilla. 2) the speed is determined by the X-Server (X-terminal) CPU speed /rather then/ the X-client (X-terminal server) speed. For example, if I connect to X-client (X-terminal server) with my 2.5GHz desktop, the webpage is not slow. Also, when the X-terminal busy 30 seconds for drawing web application, there are lots of IDLE cpu resource on the X-client (X-terminal server). This really surpised me because I thought most reason affecting X speed is the CPU time of X-client. To solve this problem, perhaps I can choose from: 1) compile a special version of mozilla to not to use much X-server resource (if mozilla has this compile option) 2) to pay for extra development on the web application so that it fully works with Opera (very troublesome, going to cost a lot) 3) replace the current X-terminals with windows terminals so we could run IE (this is a big money, also for licensing cost) 4) replace the current X-terminals with full CPU power workstations (this costs even bigger money) To me 1) is the cheapest way. Any suggestions help us out? I also heard of someone talking VNC, could this technique help us? -------- Original Message -------- Subject: firefox/mozilla extremely slow (comparing to IE and opera) for my web application? Date: Sun, 03 Jul 2005 15:39:17 +0800 From: Zhang Weiwu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Newsgroups: netscape.public.mozilla.browser Hello. Is it okay to ask question regarding to web authoring? I have a web application that some users reported being extremely slow on mozilla/firefox, and it seems the earlier versions of them are slower. Take an example, with 1.2GMhz CPU it takes 8 seconds after user clicked a selection list until the list pops up, but on IE & Opera this happen in a flash. With an 2.4GMhz CPU it takes 3 or 4 seconds to pop up any selection list. Scrolling is very slow too, as well as repaiting (after switched to another application and switch back to the browser). Javascript problem comes to my mind first, but even if javascript is disabled, the speed is not getting any faster. The web interface is very complicated to analyze, to put it simple, I can describe the main characteristic of my web application: The interface mainly consist of several layers fixed on certain positions on the browser window (by using position:absolute), and a scrollable layer behind them. E.g. several big DIV with position absolute and z-index 10, and one big DIV with position absolute but z-index:0 Besides this main difference, I don't see anything very particular on my webpages. A very-similar-in-concept webpage to my web application (but much simpler) can be found here: http://www.stunicholls.myby.co.uk/layouts/body2.html Could this be the reason of being slow? Is this going to be enhanced in the next release of gecko/firefox/mozilla? If anyone is interested in help me dig out the reason (and may help improve mozilla as well), I am happy to give you access to my web application used in my company. -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
