boards.ie amd Mac speed issues?

Hugh_C

I seem to be having awful performance from this site. Very slow to load, crap and annoying overall. Almost too slow to bother using.

OS X 10.2.6, safari, TiBook 800 etc

Is it a javascript issue or just bad code?

H

Dustaz

Hmm, its slowish but not unreasonable on NN os8.

Gordon, any advice?

(Stick with it Hugh, if only so theres someone here older than me )

Gordon

Don't know if its the code or the Java but Safari in my experience is crud for boards. If you want a good boards browser go for iCab. My mate who sells Apple gear swears by Safari and some other browser and always updates my browsers when he comes round but I always end up saying "nah, thats a crap browser, boards is really slow with it, iCab rox" he doesn't like that.

iCab on a 56k on osX is very fast with boards but with all browsers bar internet explorer (me spits on the carpet) you may unfortunately have to disable the Java, but you get used to it. In fact the Java on all other browsers i have tried bar internet explorer (*squit*) is pants for boards.

it isn't that large a download.

(you will lose functionality for boards on some areas such as the smily clicky menu on reply, the auto code on reply (such as {img} insert) and some other stuff)

Oh, if you do get iCab - don't use it for important flight bookings or buying off Amazon for example. Anything that is important may use popup Java or openwindows and I'm not sure if they will work even if you have Java enabled. man, some people just don;t think of non Java browsers these days . I switch to IE5 for anything that is important and that I haven't trusted with iCab.

oh and Dustaz: paddy20 is your age isn't he?

Hugh_C

Originally posted by Dustaz
(Stick with it Hugh, if only so theres someone here older than me )

But I'm still in my twenties (lying through his teeth)...

Forgot to mention that I'm accessing through a Colt 256k leased line service. I'll try the iCab idea and see if that improves thangs.

¬H

b3t4

I use Camino ver 0.7 and find it excellent.

Only problem with it is that if you are playing the Arcade games it tends to crash. But if ya mostly just browse tis brill.

Rgds,
A.

ecksor

I just bought an iBook (using it now with the latest Safari beta) and it seems ok. IE seemed crap though, and I can see the menu issue now that has been mentioned before. Anyway, at least now we can recreate this stuff ...

The things we admins do for you lot.

Gordon

Saviour!

My suggestion for next word of the day.

deezoid

Thanx be to god. I thought I was the only Mac-er with deplorable load times for Boards - even with "supposed" broadband. I t really makes it not worthwhile even looking - it can take up to a minute - sometimes more - for a page to view. Its a pain in the hole!

flywheel

mentioned the safari boards menu issure on the admin/support forum - but no one seemed interested (well no one repled anyhow!)

RE: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=95975

BrianG

ecksor

Sorry Brian, you weren't being ignored. If you search on the admin forums you'll find that the issue has been brought to our attention quite a few times before that. I think that before now none of the admins would have had access to a safari install. I'm tending to stick with IE 5.2.2 so far actually ...

Gordon

ecksor, are you using multiple windows on IE? When I use multiple windows IE lags big time.

ecksor

I have three browser windows open at the minute, often more. I haven't noticed a connection between that and speed, but I'll keep an eye on it.

flywheel

Originally posted by ecksor
Sorry Brian, you weren't being ignored.

*sniff* - that's ok then

Originally posted by ecksor
If you search on the admin forums you'll find that the issue has been brought to our attention quite a few times before that. I think that before now none of the admins would have had access to a safari install.

just noticed no one else had been replied to so thought i'd post an update with the Beta 2 that had been released in the mean time - never know Beta 3 (or whatever is the next version) might sort it all out itself - but if it was a small tweak would be really great to have it sorted

Originally posted by ecksor
I'm tending to stick with IE 5.2.2 so far actually ... ..

me too for anything important like online shopping etc. (especially with issues like that SSL bug discovered recently - sinced fixed) - but for general browsing I really like Safari's speed and feaures like SnapBack

thanks,
atb,
BrianG

ecksor

Since I only have the Mac a few days (and I got a tungsten T on the same day, so it hasn't gotten all of my attention) I'm still getting to grips with it, so haven't actually settled on anything as such. What I really miss are virtual desktops.

b3t4

Ecksor,

You can get an app called space.app (from versiontracker.com, iirc) which acts as virtual desktops (workspaces in linux??)

I was using it for a while and found it good. Stopped using it as Im not doing as much proging as Iv done in the past.

Rgds,
A.

Hugh_C

Originally posted by ecksor
Sorry Brian, you weren't being ignored. If you search on the admin forums you'll find that the issue has been brought to our attention quite a few times before that. I think that before now none of the admins would have had access to a safari install. I'm tending to stick with IE 5.2.2 so far actually ...

Actually, I'm pretty sure it isn't a Safari issue, this site is at best sluggish with any of the browsers I've tried - explorer & netscape included. I think it's a Java or javascript issue, writing with our Windows brethren and sistren in mind and not paying a whole lot of attention to compliance. I mean, the software that runs this site is just a piece of off-the-shelf code that's probably buggy, and the developers don't test it on Macs.

Arse.

ecksor

I use a combination of Palm/WebPro, Mac/IE, OpenBSD/Netscape and FreeBSD/konqueror,mozilla to browse boards, and I am of roughly the same opinion.

Synkronite

I have a problem everytime I open up a new page on boards (a thread, whatever) Get the spinning wheel of death that lasts around 20seconds.. locking the browser..

Run OSX 10.2.6 w/ 640Mb Ram and g4 867Mhz 12" PB..

Davey Liver

ecksor

Er?

Gordon

cor, the Mac boards first casualty :shock:

timod

Originally posted by Gordon


Oh, if you do get iCab - don't use it for important flight bookings or buying off Amazon for example. Anything that is important may use popup Java or openwindows and I'm not sure if they will work even if you have Java enabled. man, some people just don;t think of non Java browsers these days . I switch to IE5 for anything that is important and that I haven't trusted with iCab.

The beauty about iCab though is that you can create filters, so that Javascript will only be disabled for that one site, and you can set it the popups on Amazon do pop up, even if all the others pop ups are off.

Once CSS is up and running properly in iCab 3.0, the menuing system should work great. (at the moment it can't handle the float and clear CSS tags)

Tim

Stark

speed problems are definitely due to the javascript. Turn off javascript and boards runs perfectly with just one or two missing features like the drop down menus at the top. The boards admins should really rip out all custom javascript like this and recode it from scratch because they suffer problems on everything bar internet explorer.

ecksor

Should we now.

If anyone can point to any precise code issues or give a pointer to some resource on what causes compatibility issues like this then that would be cool. I keep hearing that we're non-standard, but I don't find anything that will analyse for such issues. I'm not discounting the idea of searching for an alternative menu system, but I'd feel better if we could figure out the issue with the current solution.

Baud

I don't know what it is in the javascript that causes the problem (maybe the mozilla javascript debugger could help out there), but whatever it is, itdirect (www.itdirect.ie) have something similar for their product browsing (they may have changed it a while ago). While it is annoying that it hangs safari and mozilla/galeon etc on linux, I live with it.

Synkronite

The board's drop-down menus dont work at all with Safari (Which is KHTML based btw) All the menu items are bunched together in the centre making it impossible to navigate.

Stark

Get Safari to send it's identification string as an IE browser to boards.ie, the drop-down menu should work then (but may be a little flaky).

PhilipMarlowe

Isn't version 4 of the menu in beta at the moment... the horizontal squish seems to be fixed but you can't click on the entries to go anywhere
http://www.milonic.com/4beta/horizontal.htm
see down near the end of this thread... http://www.milonic.co.uk/menu/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1865&highlight=safari

kevmac

Has to be Java implementation as Safari for me is the best web browser I've ever used.

I have found no other site that loads so slowly than boards.ie

kevmac

Just switched of Java and Javascript in Safari preferences and Boards.ie loaded in two seconds compared to 15-20 on my NTL 600 connection.

This is the first time I have ever had to this.

BTW Boards loads slowly with IE on my Mac at work.

Stark

Used to load slowly for me under IE, seems okay now. It's when you try to open a lot of windows, or especially tabs that you run into major responsiveness problems and crash your browser

Synkronite

Originally posted by k.oriordan
Get Safari to send it's identification string as an IE browser to boards.ie, the drop-down menu should work then (but may be a little flaky).

Sorry to sound dumb, but how do I do that?

Thanks
-Fawad

DannyD

Just to confirm that this problem also occurs under Mozilla 1.2.1 under Windows 2000.

kevmac

Nothing personal to Boards.ie but Apple have just released Safari 1.0 and this is what they have to say:

"Rest assured, Safari renders Web pages properly according to the latest Internet standards. So pages that use advanced HTML, XML, XHTML, DOM, CSS, JavaScript and Java specifications look just right. And of course you can view the content in QuickTime, Flash and Shockwave plug-ins. Going beyond standard accuracy, pages in Safari look beautiful, thanks to fully anti-aliased text. Safari takes advantage of Mac OS X?s rich support for Unicode, which lets you view sites in different writing systems, such as English and other Roman languages, Japanese, Chinese, Hebrew or Arabic ? even on the same page.

On Mac OS X, Java applets work best in Safari, which takes advantage of the latest version of the standard Java Internet Plug-In. Applets load much faster than previously and the plug-in supports new advanced caching features for Java classes and JAR files. Certificates used in signed applets are now stored directly in the Mac OS X Keychain, providing centralised access. What?s more, you?ll find that Safari and the Java 1.4.1 Plug-In allow you to work with more Java-based Web sites than ever before on the Mac."

So basically from all our experience Boards.ie is using a proprietary Windows slanted software package that has not stayed up-to-date with industry standards.

I'll ask again: Why on my Mac does it take 10-15 seconds for the Boards to load?

ecksor

See my post above.

I'm downloading the safari update now, I'll comment when it is installed.

LegacyUser

I'm using a basic iMac with OS 9.2 and I used to have serious problems (with IE5) until a friend suggested switching off Java and scripting. Worked a treat, now the boards run fine for me (after an initial problem where it could take around five minutes (no exageration to reply to a topic — i had to type my reply in Mickeysoft Word, cut and paste into the reply box, otherwise there would be whole sentences missing).

Slutmonkey57b

Rest assured, Safari renders Web pages properly according to the latest Internet standards. So pages that use advanced HTML, XML, XHTML, DOM, CSS, JavaScript and Java specifications look just right.

This is known as "marketing blurb", not "independantly verified fact". Never believe what a software vendor (even, and some might say especially, Apple) tells you without seeing some independant confirmation first. Safari has been riddled with complaints all through its development cycle, and if you believe Apple's great standards, you're probably not one of the people who had their phone's sim memory wiped by the recent iSync update. Having used macs for years and switched to windows (I had a choice - have no computer, or blag 1200 quids worth of gear at trade price and build my own wintel) I have to say, looking back - Apple deserved a lot of the criticism it gets for slow, sloppy coding.

kevmac

Have to say I disagree.


Have had to work with Macs and PCs for fifteen years and Macs are way ahead of PCs IMHO.

OS X has only confirmed it even more with its UNIX base.

Have used three Sony Ericsson phones (t39, t69 and t610) with iSync with no problems.

Have not had one problem with Safari running on six Macs for the last six months but even if I had it would be down to the fact that Safari has been Beta up to last Monday.

Slutmonkey57b

There's no point in showing off OSx as a great example of Apple coding - it's UNIX - ported from Next! Apples bells and whistles (esp. the Dock) generated as many complaints about slowness and cluttering user interface until the release of Jaguar as they did compliments. And not everyone was affected by the iSync bug - but simply put, Apple should have tested that code better before putting it out there. A sofware update that wipes your phone? Tell me Microsoft wouldn't get flayed alive for releasing something like that, and deservedly so.

I remember my first experience of realising my Mac fetish might be blinding me to facts - using Winzip for the first time over Stuffit. The speed increase, and size difference was huuuge.