Slow performance with Gmail

Binary package hint: firefox-3.0

When scrolling in Gmail (and other websites however its not as noticable) the scrolling performance is terrible. There is a slight lag from when it starts to scroll to when it actually does scroll. On my Windows XP machine it is MUCH faster (basically instant). This is present with both Compiz enabled and disabled.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Tue Apr 15 01:01:46 2008
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.04
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: firefox-3.0 3.0~b5+nobinonly-0ubuntu1
PackageArchitecture: i386
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: firefox-3.0
Uname: Linux 2.6.24-16-generic i686

i can confirm this. it is really slow when scrolling down through gmail inbox.

I have checked many other sites to reproduce this "bug" and I can now say that is should be considered a "show stopper". It appears that it's related to the javascript performance (or AJAX or something similar) and is TERRIBLE.

Another good example is any website that offer Ajax images such as: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/downloads/ssotd/
These images on any other machine should load very swiftly and smoothly. Especially with Firefox 3.0 (compared to 2.x).

They load EXTREMELY slow. I dual boot WinXP on this machine and I can compare the javascript performance and it's night and day. I have also tried a Mac OS X box running Firefox 3.0 beta5 to further test it. One of the huge improvements in Firefox 3 is obviously supposed to be its performance (among other things). My iPhone is actually faster at this point. This is a huge bug.

The package update today: 3.0~b5+nobinonly-0ubuntu2 has not changed anything related to it.

I have the same problem with Gmail, and that worldofwarcraft.com link posted earlier. The images themselves are loaded instantly, but whatever script is used to reveal the picture is extremely slow. I'm using Hardy Heron release and Firefox3b5, with Nvidia 8400 and HP laptop.

Yea there is a definite problem because I've tried it on a couple other computers to confirm it. Any website with Ajax/Javascript sort of stuff works way too slow.

Another example is: http://www.transmissionbt.com/screenshots.php

The screenshots open and disappear choppy, when on a WinXP or Mac OS machine with Firefox 3.0, or Opera, they are much smoother.

Same problem here.

This workaround helped:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=4412617

The problem is the number of checkboxes (and other widgets); the theme Ubuntu-ClearLooks seems very innefficient for those.

Same problem here after the Hardy upgrade. Scrolling on pages like gmail is unbearably slow. I have an Nvidia card with Desktop Effects turned off (black windows problem). Is this really due to AJAX or is it due to the widgets on the page being drawn in teh same theme as Ubuntu? Should make a test page with just a bunch of widgets and no AJAX. I tried disabling Ubuntu Firefox Extension but it didn't help.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=734462

Changing to Gmail "Older Version" (using the link or going to https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=1 ) solved the problem here.

I have the same problem here. The problem started after I've upgraded to Hardy and gmail switched to "new version" mode. I had to switch back to "old version" as a workaround.

Yes your right the "Old version" is definitely a work around. It would be nice to see the bug resolved though because on my WinXP machine both modes run fine.

On a side note I have also found the performance to be oddly better with my NVIDIA GeForce 8600GT with the open source drivers than the nvidia-glx-new drivers from restricted. This is unfortunate because I cannot use Compiz-fusion with the open source ones.

On 5/1/08, phinn <email address hidden> wrote:
>
> On a side note I have also found the performance to be oddly better with
> my NVIDIA GeForce 8600GT with the open source drivers than the nvidia-
> glx-new drivers from restricted. This is unfortunate because I cannot
> use Compiz-fusion with the open source ones.
>

I also have a 8600GT, but instead of using the drivers from Ubuntu (open
source or restricted) I downloaded and installed the latest nvidia drivers
from http://www.nvidia.com. Besides the problem with GMail, I'm having
excellent performance with compiz fusion and other 3D applications.

--
Murilo Saraiva de Queiroz, MSc.
Senior Software Engineer
http://www.vettalabs.com

I tried the Murrine workaround and it did not seem to help. I think this is a pretty major bug. Browsing certain pages with Firefox is very slow and there appears to be no way for me to workaround.

Endolith, do you mean you tried the work around at: https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox-3.0/+bug/217580/comments/9

I changed to Murrine and to gmail older version simultaneously - now I
believe that what helped wasnt' Murrine, but changing GMail.

Officially Google doesn't support Firefox 3 yet; there are plenty of angry
messages about it in gmail discussion groups.

On Thu, May 1, 2008 at 9:48 PM, Endolith <email address hidden> wrote:

> I tried the Murrine workaround and it did not seem to help. I think
> this is a pretty major bug. Browsing certain pages with Firefox is very
> slow and there appears to be no way for me to workaround.
>
> --
> Slow performance with Gmail
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/217580
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

--
Murilo Saraiva de Queiroz, MSc.
Senior Software Engineer
http://www.vettalabs.com

>
> phinn wrote:
>
>> > Yes your right the "Old version" is definitely a work around. It would
>> > be nice to see the bug resolved though because on my WinXP machine both
>> > modes run fine.
>> >
>> > On a side note I have also found the performance to be oddly better with
>> > my NVIDIA GeForce 8600GT with the open source drivers than the nvidia-
>> > glx-new drivers from restricted. This is unfortunate because I cannot
>> > use Compiz-fusion with the open source ones.
>> >
>> >
>>

I am unable to reproduce this in firefox 3.0
Can you please confirm if this happens in galeon, epiphany-browser,
konq. to give us a better idea but im honestly lean towards gmail beta
version being why its slow but i would need more to go on, I check my 6+
gmail boxes every couple of days just to clean up since i keep the mail
there due to the way i set it up.

--
Sincerely Yours,
    John Vivirito

https://launchpad.net/~gnomefreak
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/JohnVivirito
Linux User# 414246

On Fri, May 2, 2008 at 1:18 PM, John Vivirito <email address hidden> wrote:

> I am unable to reproduce this in firefox 3.0
> Can you please confirm if this happens in galeon, epiphany-browser,
> konq. to give us a better idea but im honestly lean towards gmail beta
> version being why its slow but i would need more to go on, I check my 6+
> gmail boxes every couple of days just to clean up since i keep the mail
> there due to the way i set it up.

- Galeon works fine.
- Epiphany has the problem (as slow as Firefox 3.0 b5)
- Standard GMail doesn't work on Konqueror, but the HTML version is OK.

--
Murilo Saraiva de Queiroz, MSc.
Senior Software Engineer
http://www.vettalabs.com

muriloq wrote:
> On Fri, May 2, 2008 at 1:18 PM, John Vivirito <email address hidden>
> wrote:
>
>
>> I am unable to reproduce this in firefox 3.0
>> Can you please confirm if this happens in galeon, epiphany-browser,
>> konq. to give us a better idea but im honestly lean towards gmail beta
>> version being why its slow but i would need more to go on, I check my 6+
>> gmail boxes every couple of days just to clean up since i keep the mail
>> there due to the way i set it up.
>>
>
>
> - Galeon works fine.
> - Epiphany has the problem (as slow as Firefox 3.0 b5)
> - Standard GMail doesn't work on Konqueror, but the HTML version is OK.
>
>
This sounds like its a google thing can you please confirm that this
happens on goggle calendar google documents. As i understand it its a
google issue more than a firefox one it seems they havent replaced the
code to run with firefox-3.0 This is unconfirmed at this time but i have
an email into google asking about it.

--
Sincerely Yours,
    John Vivirito

https://launchpad.net/~gnomefreak
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/JohnVivirito
Linux User# 414246

John Vivirito wrote:
> muriloq wrote:
>> On Fri, May 2, 2008 at 1:18 PM, John Vivirito <email address hidden>
>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> I am unable to reproduce this in firefox 3.0
>>> Can you please confirm if this happens in galeon, epiphany-browser,
>>> konq. to give us a better idea but im honestly lean towards gmail beta
>>> version being why its slow but i would need more to go on, I check my 6+
>>> gmail boxes every couple of days just to clean up since i keep the mail
>>> there due to the way i set it up.
>>>
>>
>> - Galeon works fine.
>> - Epiphany has the problem (as slow as Firefox 3.0 b5)
>> - Standard GMail doesn't work on Konqueror, but the HTML version is OK.
>>
>>
> This sounds like its a google thing can you please confirm that this
> happens on goggle calendar google documents. As i understand it its a
> google issue more than a firefox one it seems they havent replaced the
> code to run with firefox-3.0 This is unconfirmed at this time but i have
> an email into google asking about it.
>
Right from googles site is the snippet and than a link to find it.

> For the best experience, please access Gmail via Internet Explorer v.7+, Firefox v.2+, or Safari v.3+.

http://mail.google.com/support/bin/static.py?page=known_issues.cs
If you look to your right in the little yellow box you will see the
above comment

--
Sincerely Yours,
    John Vivirito

https://launchpad.net/~gnomefreak
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/JohnVivirito
Linux User# 414246

On Fri, May 2, 2008 at 3:27 PM, John Vivirito <email address hidden> wrote:

> muriloq wrote:
> > On Fri, May 2, 2008 at 1:18 PM, John Vivirito <email address hidden>
> > wrote:
> >
> >> I am unable to reproduce this in firefox 3.0
> >> Can you please confirm if this happens in galeon, epiphany-browser,
> >> konq. to give us a better idea but im honestly lean towards gmail beta
> >> version being why its slow but i would need more to go on, I check my
> 6+
> >> gmail boxes every couple of days just to clean up since i keep the mail
> >> there due to the way i set it up.
> >>
> >
> > - Galeon works fine.
> > - Epiphany has the problem (as slow as Firefox 3.0 b5)
> > - Standard GMail doesn't work on Konqueror, but the HTML version is OK.
> >
> This sounds like its a google thing can you please confirm that this
> happens on goggle calendar google documents. As i understand it its a
> google issue more than a firefox one it seems they havent replaced the
> code to run with firefox-3.0 This is unconfirmed at this time but i have
> an email into google asking about it.
>

It's not Google-specific. For example, the forum below scrolls slowly (and
with a lot of lag - it keeps moving 2-3 seconds after I stop rolling the
mouse wheel) in Firefox 3 but it's perfect in Galeon:

http://forums.wow-europe.com/board.html?sid=1&forumId=3901822

--
Murilo Saraiva de Queiroz, MSc.
Senior Software Engineer
http://www.vettalabs.com

John Vivirito wrote:
> muriloq wrote:
>
>> On Fri, May 2, 2008 at 1:18 PM, John Vivirito <email address hidden>
>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>> I am unable to reproduce this in firefox 3.0
>>> Can you please confirm if this happens in galeon, epiphany-browser,
>>> konq. to give us a better idea but im honestly lean towards gmail beta
>>> version being why its slow but i would need more to go on, I check my 6+
>>> gmail boxes every couple of days just to clean up since i keep the mail
>>> there due to the way i set it up.
>>>
>>>
>> - Galeon works fine.
>> - Epiphany has the problem (as slow as Firefox 3.0 b5)
>> - Standard GMail doesn't work on Konqueror, but the HTML version is OK.
>>
>>
>>
> This sounds like its a google thing can you please confirm that this
> happens on goggle calendar google documents. As i understand it its a
> google issue more than a firefox one it seems they havent replaced the
> code to run with firefox-3.0 This is unconfirmed at this time but i have
> an email into google asking about it.
>
>
Here is a list of supported browsers and problems that using unsupported
browser can show:
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=6557&topic=12914
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=80446&topic=12914

--
Sincerely Yours,
    John Vivirito

https://launchpad.net/~gnomefreak
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/JohnVivirito
Linux User# 414246

John Vivirito wrote:
> muriloq wrote:
>
>> On Fri, May 2, 2008 at 1:18 PM, John Vivirito <email address hidden>
>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>> I am unable to reproduce this in firefox 3.0
>>> Can you please confirm if this happens in galeon, epiphany-browser,
>>> konq. to give us a better idea but im honestly lean towards gmail beta
>>> version being why its slow but i would need more to go on, I check my 6+
>>> gmail boxes every couple of days just to clean up since i keep the mail
>>> there due to the way i set it up.
>>>
>>>
>> - Galeon works fine.
>> - Epiphany has the problem (as slow as Firefox 3.0 b5)
>> - Standard GMail doesn't work on Konqueror, but the HTML version is OK.
>>
>>
>>
> This sounds like its a google thing can you please confirm that this
> happens on goggle calendar google documents. As i understand it its a
> google issue more than a firefox one it seems they havent replaced the
> code to run with firefox-3.0 This is unconfirmed at this time but i have
> an email into google asking about it.
>
>
This is the page after reporting it with them i will keep you updated
when i am

We're sorry that you're having trouble with your Gmail account. We've
forwarded your report to the Gmail team, and we'll contact you only if
we need more information.

While we work to resolve this issue, you should be able to access your
Gmail account through our basic HTML interface at
http://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=html. We also suggest trying another
browser such as Mozilla Firefox <http://www.mozilla.com/> or Microsoft
Internet Explorer
<http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/ie/default.mspx>.

Thanks for your patience, and we apologize for any inconvenience.

--
Sincerely Yours,
    John Vivirito

https://launchpad.net/~gnomefreak
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/JohnVivirito
Linux User# 414246

Im leaning towards https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=413280 more so can you please test the testcase they have see if you see same issue? than if you do ill mark bug for upstream bug.

for now lets go for https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=424423

definitly a xulrunner-1.9 bug; lets keep the firefox-3.0 target open to catch duplicates.

Yes, it's the same problem. I posted a comment there.

On 5/2/08, John Vivirito <email address hidden> wrote:
>
> Im leaning towards https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=413280
> more so can you please test the testcase they have see if you see same
> issue? than if you do ill mark bug for upstream bug.
>
>
> --
> Slow performance with Gmail
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/217580
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

--
Murilo Saraiva de Queiroz, MSc.
Senior Software Engineer
http://www.vettalabs.com

Changed upstram bug pre user confirm.

Same problem here.
Seems to work slow with javaScript/ajax. Scrolling down the Gmail doesn't work good.

John Vivirito wrote on 2008-05-02:

"Endolith, do you mean you tried the work around at: https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox-3.0/+bug/217580/comments/9"

No. That's not a workaround; it's just an alternative way to access gmail. This problem is not specific to Gmail. It is on many sites.

The workaround I tried is http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=708928

I also tried disabling the Ubuntu extension, since it seems related to GUI widgets on the screen (Gmail has a lot) but it does not seem to have an effect.

Confirmed - 8.04 i386

Here's a real workaround for Gmail:

1. Install the Stylish Add-on (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2108)
2. Right click the icon --> Write style --> For google.com
3. Add "*{border-style: none !important;}"

Doesn't seem to fix other sites, though, so maybe there is more than one bug here.

Upstream bug was mariked as a dup im just updating this bug report to track new bug number

this is a Xulrunner-1.9 bug, closing firerfox task for that reason

Well, the latest firefox 3.0 nightly has this fixed for me.

On Tue, May 13, 2008 at 11:33:10AM -0000, nawitus wrote:
> Well, the latest firefox 3.0 nightly has this fixed for me.
>

ok thanks for the update

 affects ubuntu/xulrunner-1.9
 status fixcommitted

 - Alexander

Hi Alexander,
       where can we get the released fix?

I have the same problem too, and I can confirm that it's not gmail specific - the other referenced sites are really slow!

On Fri, May 16, 2008 at 06:00:58PM -0000, stek79 wrote:
> Hi Alexander,
> where can we get the released fix?
>
> I have the same problem too, and I can confirm that it's not gmail
> specific - the other referenced sites are really slow!
>

You could try the latest firefox-3.0 and xulrunner-1.9 package from
https://edge.launchpad.net/~fta/+archive

at best don't add the archive to the sources.list, but just download
the debs (for hardy).

Would be great if you could confirm whether this bug is fixed or not
in those close-to-nightly packages.

 - Alexander

I'm going to try them, I'll let you know.

Thanks for the efforts!

Alex,
   can you please tell me what debs I have to download?

If I expand firefox-3.0 - 3.0~rc1+nobinonly-0ubuntu1~fta2~hardy I see more than 20 firefox packages...

Thanks

On Sat, May 17, 2008 at 10:36:17AM -0000, stek79 wrote:
> Alex,
> can you please tell me what debs I have to download?
>
> If I expand firefox-3.0 - 3.0~rc1+nobinonly-0ubuntu1~fta2~hardy I see
> more than 20 firefox packages...
>

Cant really tell ... depends on what you have installed atm
(e.g. -gnome-support)

you can check which packages you have installed by running something like:

 dpkg -l firefox\* | grep ^ii

same for xulrunner:

 dpkg -l xulrunner\* | grep ^ii

Thanks,

 - Alexander

Or you can download Firefox 3.0 release candidate 1 from here and install manually:
ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/3.0rc1-candidates/build1/

We package the builds for a reason getting them from mozilla doesnt tell us if it was them or us. If they never saw the bug in upstream than its a Ubuntu bug Cant tell if Ubuntu bug is fixed by grabbing upstream package.

On Sat, May 17, 2008 at 04:39:15PM -0000, nawitus wrote:
> Or you can download Firefox 3.0 release candidate 1 from here and install manually:
> ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/3.0rc1-candidates/build1/
>

please dont advise other users to install from mozilla. If you want to
do this, do it outside the bug tracking system.

 - Alexander

I too can confirm that this bug seems to be completely fixed in Firefox 3.0 RC1 (yay). I did a manual install from the site (since the repositories STILL haven't updated to the new one). Some of my plugins seem broken so I would advise people to just wait for repos to have it.

I had similar slow scrolling problems with my online brokerage account (tradeking) once I logged on to the website. The slow scrolling existed on both firefox-3.0 and ephiphany, but was not there in Galeon.

My problem did not get fixed with the RC1 release. Disabling compiz did not help either. However, if I logged on with a different username, the problem was not there, so maybe there is a problem with some config file. For now, I disabled the Nvidia restricted driver and the problem seems to be not present even when I log in.

Thought I would share......

Hi,
     up to me the problem now is almost fixed.

Perhaps we could close this bug?

Great work, as usual.

Thanks!

This bug has re-appeared for me. It was gone when RC1 came out, and has been back for a week or so. I believe updated packages to firefox and firefox-gnome were released in this time period as well.

Can confirm.. same here.

On Wed, Jul 2, 2008 at 4:23 PM, Chris Lasher <email address hidden> wrote:

> This bug has re-appeared for me. It was gone when RC1 came out, and has
> been back for a week or so. I believe updated packages to firefox and
> firefox-gnome were released in this time period as well.
>
> --
> Slow performance with Gmail
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/217580
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>
> Status in XUL + XPCOM application runner: Confirmed
> Status in "firefox-3.0" source package in Ubuntu: Invalid
> Status in "xulrunner-1.9" source package in Ubuntu: Fix Committed
>
> Bug description:
> Binary package hint: firefox-3.0
>
> When scrolling in Gmail (and other websites however its not as noticable)
> the scrolling performance is terrible. There is a slight lag from when it
> starts to scroll to when it actually does scroll. On my Windows XP machine
> it is MUCH faster (basically instant). This is present with both Compiz
> enabled and disabled.
>
> ProblemType: Bug
> Architecture: i386
> Date: Tue Apr 15 01:01:46 2008
> DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.04
> NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
> Package: firefox-3.0 3.0~b5+nobinonly-0ubuntu1
> PackageArchitecture: i386
> ProcEnviron:
>
> PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
> LANG=en_US.UTF-8
> SHELL=/bin/bash
> SourcePackage: firefox-3.0
> Uname: Linux 2.6.24-16-generic i686
>

Hello guys,
     too bad I have to agree with you. My previous statement was an error, I
posted to the wrong bug.

To demostrate this slowness as a quantitative issue, I taken some simple
measurements with top during some simple gmail scrolling activity.

You can see that during this simple scrolling test, my CPU goes to 100% and
the user experience is painfully slow. I don't have a top-of-the-notch PC,
it is a 1.6GHZ Athlon, but I find ridiculous this slowness when an iPhone
can scroll sites at a 10x this speed.

I think this is quite a bad problem from the user point of view, especially
since Firefox 3 is noticeably faster than Firefox 2 when drawing web pages.
Gmail and other sites are the expception, too bad.

Here you can find my measurements. As you can see, about 50% of CPU time is
spent in firefox, the other 50% in Xorg. Since it is a CPU issue I think
that we actually _can_ track this issue down, perhaps with some profiling
tool? I'm willing to help in this regard, if Alex or any other developer
could tell me what should be done to find the hot spot, I can do the test
for you.

Last note regarding my configuration. I use metacity, not compiz. X drivers
are NVIDIA, distro is Hardy up-to-date.

Here is the top log:

top - 20:27:42 up 1:07, 3 users, load average: 0.79, 0.40, 0.39
Tasks: 93 total, 2 running, 91 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 87.1%us, 12.4%sy, 0.0%ni, 0.0%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.5%si,
0.0%st
Mem: 515576k total, 505212k used, 10364k free, 12672k buffers
Swap: 996020k total, 37668k used, 958352k free, 237104k cached

  PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+
COMMAND
 8279 ste 20 0 193m 88m 22m R 56.8 17.6 1:58.94
firefox
 5271 root 20 0 48912 31m 9104 S 41.8 6.3 4:04.73
Xorg
 5705 ste 20 0 15816 5708 4416 S 1.0 1.1 0:05.12
gnome-screensav
 8453 ste 20 0 2308 1084 844 R 1.0 0.2 0:00.06
top
    1 root 20 0 2844 1688 544 S 0.0 0.3 0:01.50
init
    2 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00
kthreadd
    3 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00
migration/0
    4 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.04
ksoftirqd/0
    5 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00
watchdog/0
    6 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.06
events/0
    7 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00
khelper
   41 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.24
kblockd/0
   44 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00
kacpid
   45 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00
kacpi_notify
  112 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00
kseriod
  149 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.96
kswapd0
  192 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00
aio/0
 1476 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00
ata/0
 1479 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00
ksuspend_usbd
 1481 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00
ata_aux
 1484 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00
khubd
 1635 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00
sc...

Hi, here is a quick oprofile report during gmail scrolling, I hope it can be
useful.

2008/7/6 Stefano Doni <email address hidden>:

> Hello guys,
> too bad I have to agree with you. My previous statement was an error,
> I posted to the wrong bug.
>
> To demostrate this slowness as a quantitative issue, I taken some simple
> measurements with top during some simple gmail scrolling activity.
>
> You can see that during this simple scrolling test, my CPU goes to 100% and
> the user experience is painfully slow. I don't have a top-of-the-notch PC,
> it is a 1.6GHZ Athlon, but I find ridiculous this slowness when an iPhone
> can scroll sites at a 10x this speed.
>
> I think this is quite a bad problem from the user point of view, especially
> since Firefox 3 is noticeably faster than Firefox 2 when drawing web pages.
> Gmail and other sites are the expception, too bad.
>
> Here you can find my measurements. As you can see, about 50% of CPU time is
> spent in firefox, the other 50% in Xorg. Since it is a CPU issue I think
> that we actually _can_ track this issue down, perhaps with some profiling
> tool? I'm willing to help in this regard, if Alex or any other developer
> could tell me what should be done to find the hot spot, I can do the test
> for you.
>
> Last note regarding my configuration. I use metacity, not compiz. X drivers
> are NVIDIA, distro is Hardy up-to-date.
>
> Here is the top log:
>
> top - 20:27:42 up 1:07, 3 users, load average: 0.79, 0.40, 0.39
> Tasks: 93 total, 2 running, 91 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
> Cpu(s): 87.1%us, 12.4%sy, 0.0%ni, 0.0%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.5%si,
> 0.0%st
> Mem: 515576k total, 505212k used, 10364k free, 12672k buffers
> Swap: 996020k total, 37668k used, 958352k free, 237104k cached
>
> PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+
> COMMAND
> 8279 ste 20 0 193m 88m 22m R 56.8 17.6 1:58.94
> firefox
> 5271 root 20 0 48912 31m 9104 S 41.8 6.3 4:04.73
> Xorg
> 5705 ste 20 0 15816 5708 4416 S 1.0 1.1 0:05.12
> gnome-screensav
> 8453 ste 20 0 2308 1084 844 R 1.0 0.2 0:00.06
> top
> 1 root 20 0 2844 1688 544 S 0.0 0.3 0:01.50
> init
> 2 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00
> kthreadd
> 3 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00
> migration/0
> 4 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.04
> ksoftirqd/0
> 5 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00
> watchdog/0
> 6 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.06
> events/0
> 7 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00
> khelper
> 41 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.24
> kblockd/0
> 44 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00
> kacpid
> 45 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00
> kacpi_notify
> 112 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00
> kseriod
> 149 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.96
> kswapd0
> 192 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00
> aio/0
> 1476 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00
> ata/0
...

Cn you please test if this happens with finial release of firefox if you disable all your themes and extensions and starting firefox using "firefox -safe-mode" without the "

Hello John,
     which final release are you referring to?

Do you mean ibex's firefox?

If so, what kind of test do you want? Oprofile or a "feeling" one?

Regarding the feeling, I can say that it is not blazing fast when scrolling
gmail UI - even the last ubuntu firefox.

Let me know how I can help.

2008/11/12 John Vivirito <email address hidden>

> Cn you please test if this happens with finial release of firefox if you
> disable all your themes and extensions and starting firefox using
> "firefox -safe-mode" without the "
>
> --
> Slow performance with Gmail
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/217580
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>
> Status in XUL + XPCOM application runner: Confirmed
> Status in "firefox-3.0" source package in Ubuntu: Invalid
> Status in "xulrunner-1.9" source package in Ubuntu: Fix Committed
>
> Bug description:
> Binary package hint: firefox-3.0
>
> When scrolling in Gmail (and other websites however its not as noticable)
> the scrolling performance is terrible. There is a slight lag from when it
> starts to scroll to when it actually does scroll. On my Windows XP machine
> it is MUCH faster (basically instant). This is present with both Compiz
> enabled and disabled.
>
> ProblemType: Bug
> Architecture: i386
> Date: Tue Apr 15 01:01:46 2008
> DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.04
> NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
> Package: firefox-3.0 3.0~b5+nobinonly-0ubuntu1
> PackageArchitecture: i386
> ProcEnviron:
>
> PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
> LANG=en_US.UTF-8
> SHELL=/bin/bash
> SourcePackage: firefox-3.0
> Uname: Linux 2.6.24-16-generic i686
>

I can confirm slow Firefox scrolling on Gmail. on a Dell Latitude D630 laptop (Core2 Duo 2.2GHz, 4GB RAM) with Nvidia Quadro 135 (128mb). Scrolling is so slow that I stop turning the mouse wheel and Firefox tries to keep up for 20 more seconds (!!!) and sometimes it turns gray (not responding).

Some interesting notes:
1) the problem does not occur in the version of Gmail without Gtalk. (older interface).
2) the problem occurs with other browsers too, but they're all based in Gecko.
3) problem occurs with both compiz enabled or disabled.
4) 3D graphics work like a marvel (for example, Desktop cube).

I have enabled the Nvidia restricted drivers version 177.

I hope this bug to be fixed soon because it is such a pity for Linux users to have such a bad experience while Windows users have Firefox working smoothly and very responsively.

I can confirm Firefox @ Jaunty running VERY SLOW on very long sites.
My hardware: Nvidia GTS 250 CPU E6600 2GB RAM.

I testet opera linked with qt3 and it is running extreme fast. No lag at all.
So this must be a problem either with gtk or with geko engine.

Definitely,
      very slow scrolling for me also.

Too bad I don't think this bug is considered anymore :(

2009/4/28 aatdark <email address hidden>

> I can confirm Firefox @ Jaunty running VERY SLOW on very long sites.
> My hardware: Nvidia GTS 250 CPU E6600 2GB RAM.
>
> I testet opera linked with qt3 and it is running extreme fast. No lag at
> all.
> So this must be a problem either with gtk or with geko engine.
>
> --
> Slow performance with Gmail
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/217580
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>
> Status in XUL + XPCOM application runner: Confirmed
> Status in “firefox-3.0” source package in Ubuntu: Invalid
> Status in “xulrunner-1.9” source package in Ubuntu: Fix Committed
>
> Bug description:
> Binary package hint: firefox-3.0
>
> When scrolling in Gmail (and other websites however its not as noticable)
> the scrolling performance is terrible. There is a slight lag from when it
> starts to scroll to when it actually does scroll. On my Windows XP machine
> it is MUCH faster (basically instant). This is present with both Compiz
> enabled and disabled.
>
> ProblemType: Bug
> Architecture: i386
> Date: Tue Apr 15 01:01:46 2008
> DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.04
> NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
> Package: firefox-3.0 3.0~b5+nobinonly-0ubuntu1
> PackageArchitecture: i386
> ProcEnviron:
>
> PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
> LANG=en_US.UTF-8
> SHELL=/bin/bash
> SourcePackage: firefox-3.0
> Uname: Linux 2.6.24-16-generic i686
>

ok i did some further investigation.
The Process that causes all the CPU load is xorg.

But i don't think that xorg is the problem. I played a little bit with the css of the page and i found the following:

the css code that causes all the problems is:
position:fixed;

Each time there is a "static" component on the website that does not change position while scrolling this bugs appears.

But this problem is not that simple: The problem only occour when there are a lot of images.
For example i removed on testpage 320 Buddy icons and the problem disappeared.

May someone from the officals comment on this?

the best example:
http://stinkt.kicks-ass.org/1b6cc1af2e8437646c9b7422d78e6eb3/slidecast%20-%20studio%20-%20vertical-view.html
(this is a static copy of the site)

just try scrolling with you mousewheele up and down very fast. Then you can see that the page is still scrolling seconds after you stoped to scroll. Often firefox also gets gray because compiz thinks that it is not responding any more.

I can confirm this website, too.
here is a video i've 'ploaded in youtube sawing the problem in firefox in ubuntu, then the same website in firefox in windows (virtualbox) works fine.
I think a major difference in the windows version of firefox is that in windows firefox seems to drop mousewheel events if they become too,while on the other hand firefox in linux tries to server every last one of them, thus taking for ever to complete.
I hope firefox guys will fix this SOON. It's been so many years (in fact I've noticed this annoying thing since I started using ubuntu 6.04) and the bug is still there. I just can't understand why they ignore it like it doesn't exist.
I have windows installed in virtualbox, ONLY to run Firefox decently for gods sake....

sorry this is the link of the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF3rYMEbIOw

On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 3:36 AM, aatdark <email address hidden> wrote:
> the css code that causes all the problems is:
> position:fixed;

Yes, this is definitely true. Scrolling is fine until there is a chat
or task list up. Perhaps someone should file a mozilla bug with this
more specific information.

so for performance issues, trunk builds might be better. consider to try firefox-3.6 (or firefox-3.5) from the ubuntu daily archive: https://edge.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-mozilla-daily/+archive/ppa

On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 12:16 PM, Alexander Sack <email address hidden> wrote:
> so for performance issues, trunk builds might be better. consider to try
> firefox-3.6 (or firefox-3.5) from the ubuntu daily archive:
> https://edge.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-mozilla-daily/+archive/ppa

asac, I've just reproduced the slow scrolling with fixed position
elements in gmail, with 3.6 from that ppa
(3.6~a1~hg20090429r27900+nobinonly-0ubuntu1~umd2).

To everyone now involved in this bug... I have now also made a bug report on Mozilla's Bugzilla. Firefox + NVIDIA users have long had to deal with this problem or not having compiz-fusion and just using the Nv drivers to avoid it. Hopefully it will get some attention over there as well.

Here is the bugzilla url: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=490563

I don't thinik its an nvidia specific bug.
I get the same sluggish behavior with:
ATI Mobility Radeon 9600
nvidia GT 8500
nvidia Quadro nvs135
intel GMA X3100
and many others I've tested

>To everyone now involved in this bug... I have now also made a bug
> report on Mozilla's Bugzilla. Firefox + NVIDIA users have long had to
> deal with this problem or not having compiz-fusion and just using the Nv

how about filing bugs with NVIDIA instead of mozilla? If nv really helps, this means that they are the ones with all the power to fix this for you.

> asac, I've just reproduced the slow scrolling with fixed position
> elements in gmail, with 3.6 from that ppa

That is bug:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=427431

So iirc, we had a few performance issues in 1.9/3.0:
 1. border painting slow - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=424423 (fixed in ffox 3.5 + trunk)
 2. dashed and dotted borders slow - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=422330 (partially fixed in 3.5 + trunk because of 1.)
 3. scrolling of non-fixed elements sluggish when fixed elements are available - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=382392 (fixed in 3.0 final)
 4. absolute positioned elements still slow after 3. - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=427431

Because it's not entirely an Nvidia bug either. My IBM T60 laptop draws Firefox pages perfectly smooth with crappy ATI X1400 card compared to my high end PC, its ridiculous. However, If you try Opera or Webkit based browsers in Linux this problem does not occur. It is only between Firefox + Nvidia.

Yea, there should be some kind of bug report filled with Nvidia for sure though. As both Firefox and them are to blame.

i can confirm bad behaviour on Intel 4500MHD. (After extensive scrolling the windows turns gray and keeps scrolling)
hope the bug will be fixed in FF 3.5

Here's some hard performance data.

I've measured Xorg and firefox CPU consumption in two scenarios:

1) System completely idle
2) Firefox open on gmail, only 1 tab, no firefox extensions, scrolling down
this launchpad thread fully expaned with mouse wheel.

In both cases I've recorded CPU utilization, 10 top recordings every 5
seconds each of the two processes. Command line:

top -b -n 10 -d 5 -p $(pidof firefox),$(pidof X)

I'm attaching the two top logs. Two noteworthy things to point out:

1) CPU fully saturated (constantly 100%) when scrolling in gmail!
2) Process responsible for this is Xorg!

See the attached logs. One important thing: I'm using nouveau now in Jaunty.
Later I'll redo the recordings with nv and possibily NVIDIA closed drivers.
I don't think it is a matter of driver though, I've opened this slowness bug
when I was using Intrepid with nv and the situation was the same.

Now, next step could be to profile the driver and see where the time is
spent. Anyone willing to dive into this with me? I'm willing to profile this
workload, if someone can guide me.

2009/5/1 phinn <email address hidden>

> Because it's not entirely an Nvidia bug either. My IBM T60 laptop draws
> Firefox pages perfectly smooth with crappy ATI X1400 card compared to my
> high end PC, its ridiculous. However, If you try Opera or Webkit based
> browsers in Linux this problem does not occur. It is only between
> Firefox + Nvidia.
>
> Yea, there should be some kind of bug report filled with Nvidia for sure
> though. As both Firefox and them are to blame.
>
> --
> Slow performance with Gmail
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/217580
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>
> Status in XUL + XPCOM application runner: Confirmed
> Status in “firefox-3.0” source package in Ubuntu: Invalid
> Status in “xulrunner-1.9” source package in Ubuntu: Fix Committed
>
> Bug description:
> Binary package hint: firefox-3.0
>
> When scrolling in Gmail (and other websites however its not as noticable)
> the scrolling performance is terrible. There is a slight lag from when it
> starts to scroll to when it actually does scroll. On my Windows XP machine
> it is MUCH faster (basically instant). This is present with both Compiz
> enabled and disabled.
>
> ProblemType: Bug
> Architecture: i386
> Date: Tue Apr 15 01:01:46 2008
> DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.04
> NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
> Package: firefox-3.0 3.0~b5+nobinonly-0ubuntu1
> PackageArchitecture: i386
> ProcEnviron:
>
> PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
> LANG=en_US.UTF-8
> SHELL=/bin/bash
> SourcePackage: firefox-3.0
> Uname: Linux 2.6.24-16-generic i686
>

top-idle.log

2009/5/2 Stefano Doni <email address hidden>

> Here's some hard performance data.
>
> I've measured Xorg and firefox CPU consumption in two scenarios:
>
> 1) System completely idle
> 2) Firefox open on gmail, only 1 tab, no firefox extensions, scrolling down
> this launchpad thread fully expaned with mouse wheel.
>
> In both cases I've recorded CPU utilization, 10 top recordings every 5
> seconds each of the two processes. Command line:
>
> top -b -n 10 -d 5 -p $(pidof firefox),$(pidof X)
>
> I'm attaching the two top logs. Two noteworthy things to point out:
>
> 1) CPU fully saturated (constantly 100%) when scrolling in gmail!
> 2) Process responsible for this is Xorg!
>
> See the attached logs. One important thing: I'm using nouveau now in
> Jaunty. Later I'll redo the recordings with nv and possibily NVIDIA closed
> drivers. I don't think it is a matter of driver though, I've opened this
> slowness bug when I was using Intrepid with nv and the situation was the
> same.
>
> Now, next step could be to profile the driver and see where the time is
> spent. Anyone willing to dive into this with me? I'm willing to profile this
> workload, if someone can guide me.
>
> 2009/5/1 phinn <email address hidden>
>
> Because it's not entirely an Nvidia bug either. My IBM T60 laptop draws
>> Firefox pages perfectly smooth with crappy ATI X1400 card compared to my
>> high end PC, its ridiculous. However, If you try Opera or Webkit based
>> browsers in Linux this problem does not occur. It is only between
>> Firefox + Nvidia.
>>
>> Yea, there should be some kind of bug report filled with Nvidia for sure
>> though. As both Firefox and them are to blame.
>>
>> --
>> Slow performance with Gmail
>> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/217580
>> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
>> of the bug.
>>
>> Status in XUL + XPCOM application runner: Confirmed
>> Status in “firefox-3.0” source package in Ubuntu: Invalid
>> Status in “xulrunner-1.9” source package in Ubuntu: Fix Committed
>>
>> Bug description:
>> Binary package hint: firefox-3.0
>>
>> When scrolling in Gmail (and other websites however its not as noticable)
>> the scrolling performance is terrible. There is a slight lag from when it
>> starts to scroll to when it actually does scroll. On my Windows XP machine
>> it is MUCH faster (basically instant). This is present with both Compiz
>> enabled and disabled.
>>
>> ProblemType: Bug
>> Architecture: i386
>> Date: Tue Apr 15 01:01:46 2008
>> DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.04
>> NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
>> Package: firefox-3.0 3.0~b5+nobinonly-0ubuntu1
>> PackageArchitecture: i386
>> ProcEnviron:
>>
>> PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
>> LANG=en_US.UTF-8
>> SHELL=/bin/bash
>> SourcePackage: firefox-3.0
>> Uname: Linux 2.6.24-16-generic i686
>>
>
>

top-firefox-scrolling.log

2009/5/2 Stefano Doni <email address hidden>

> top-idle.log
>
> 2009/5/2 Stefano Doni <email address hidden>
>
> Here's some hard performance data.
>>
>> I've measured Xorg and firefox CPU consumption in two scenarios:
>>
>> 1) System completely idle
>> 2) Firefox open on gmail, only 1 tab, no firefox extensions, scrolling
>> down this launchpad thread fully expaned with mouse wheel.
>>
>> In both cases I've recorded CPU utilization, 10 top recordings every 5
>> seconds each of the two processes. Command line:
>>
>> top -b -n 10 -d 5 -p $(pidof firefox),$(pidof X)
>>
>> I'm attaching the two top logs. Two noteworthy things to point out:
>>
>> 1) CPU fully saturated (constantly 100%) when scrolling in gmail!
>> 2) Process responsible for this is Xorg!
>>
>> See the attached logs. One important thing: I'm using nouveau now in
>> Jaunty. Later I'll redo the recordings with nv and possibily NVIDIA closed
>> drivers. I don't think it is a matter of driver though, I've opened this
>> slowness bug when I was using Intrepid with nv and the situation was the
>> same.
>>
>> Now, next step could be to profile the driver and see where the time is
>> spent. Anyone willing to dive into this with me? I'm willing to profile this
>> workload, if someone can guide me.
>>
>> 2009/5/1 phinn <email address hidden>
>>
>> Because it's not entirely an Nvidia bug either. My IBM T60 laptop draws
>>> Firefox pages perfectly smooth with crappy ATI X1400 card compared to my
>>> high end PC, its ridiculous. However, If you try Opera or Webkit based
>>> browsers in Linux this problem does not occur. It is only between
>>> Firefox + Nvidia.
>>>
>>> Yea, there should be some kind of bug report filled with Nvidia for sure
>>> though. As both Firefox and them are to blame.
>>>
>>> --
>>> Slow performance with Gmail
>>> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/217580
>>> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
>>> of the bug.
>>>
>>> Status in XUL + XPCOM application runner: Confirmed
>>> Status in “firefox-3.0” source package in Ubuntu: Invalid
>>> Status in “xulrunner-1.9” source package in Ubuntu: Fix Committed
>>>
>>> Bug description:
>>> Binary package hint: firefox-3.0
>>>
>>> When scrolling in Gmail (and other websites however its not as noticable)
>>> the scrolling performance is terrible. There is a slight lag from when it
>>> starts to scroll to when it actually does scroll. On my Windows XP machine
>>> it is MUCH faster (basically instant). This is present with both Compiz
>>> enabled and disabled.
>>>
>>> ProblemType: Bug
>>> Architecture: i386
>>> Date: Tue Apr 15 01:01:46 2008
>>> DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.04
>>> NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
>>> Package: firefox-3.0 3.0~b5+nobinonly-0ubuntu1
>>> PackageArchitecture: i386
>>> ProcEnviron:
>>>
>>> PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
>>> LANG=en_US.UTF-8
>>> SHELL=/bin/bash
>>> SourcePackage: firefox-3.0
>>> Uname: Linux 2.6.24-16-generic i686
>>>
>>
>>
>

Here's the data of the same firefox scrolling test, this time with nv
driver.

It seems a little bit better, Xorg draws a little less CPU consumption
compared with nouveau, but it is still the bottleneck as you can see.

See attachment.

2009/5/2 aatdark <email address hidden>

> i can confirm bad behaviour on Intel 4500MHD. (After extensive scrolling
> the windows turns gray and keeps scrolling)
> hope the bug will be fixed in FF 3.5
>
> --
> Slow performance with Gmail
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/217580
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>
> Status in XUL + XPCOM application runner: Confirmed
> Status in “firefox-3.0” source package in Ubuntu: Invalid
> Status in “xulrunner-1.9” source package in Ubuntu: Fix Committed
>
> Bug description:
> Binary package hint: firefox-3.0
>
> When scrolling in Gmail (and other websites however its not as noticable)
> the scrolling performance is terrible. There is a slight lag from when it
> starts to scroll to when it actually does scroll. On my Windows XP machine
> it is MUCH faster (basically instant). This is present with both Compiz
> enabled and disabled.
>
> ProblemType: Bug
> Architecture: i386
> Date: Tue Apr 15 01:01:46 2008
> DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.04
> NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
> Package: firefox-3.0 3.0~b5+nobinonly-0ubuntu1
> PackageArchitecture: i386
> ProcEnviron:
>
> PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
> LANG=en_US.UTF-8
> SHELL=/bin/bash
> SourcePackage: firefox-3.0
> Uname: Linux 2.6.24-16-generic i686
>

although xorg uses all the cpu time it must be a firefox bug because opera qt does not show any of this issues.
Is this an xulrunner or an firefox bug ?

this is an updated version of the page. It does not contain any "position:fixed" element on it.
as you can see the scrolling is very fast.

http://stinkt.kicks-ass.org/1b6cc1af2e8437646c9b7422d78e6eb3/no_css_fix_pos.html

(original page with the position:fixed elements)
http://stinkt.kicks-ass.org/1b6cc1af2e8437646c9b7422d78e6eb3/slidecast%20-%20studio%20-%20vertical-view.html

I've profiled the system while executing the previously described workload.

Attached you can find oprofile output.

Even though there are no symbols (I guess I need debug packages for that),
it shows where the time is spent.

Alex, let me know if symbols might be interesting to track this down.

2009/5/2 aatdark <email address hidden>

> although xorg uses all the cpu time it must be a firefox bug because opera
> qt does not show any of this issues.
> Is this an xulrunner or an firefox bug ?
>
> ** Also affects: firefox via
> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=427431
> Importance: Unknown
> Status: Unknown
>
> --
> Slow performance with Gmail
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/217580
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>
> Status in The Mozilla Firefox Browser: Unknown
> Status in XUL + XPCOM application runner: Confirmed
> Status in “firefox-3.0” source package in Ubuntu: Invalid
> Status in “xulrunner-1.9” source package in Ubuntu: Fix Committed
>
> Bug description:
> Binary package hint: firefox-3.0
>
> When scrolling in Gmail (and other websites however its not as noticable)
> the scrolling performance is terrible. There is a slight lag from when it
> starts to scroll to when it actually does scroll. On my Windows XP machine
> it is MUCH faster (basically instant). This is present with both Compiz
> enabled and disabled.
>
> ProblemType: Bug
> Architecture: i386
> Date: Tue Apr 15 01:01:46 2008
> DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.04
> NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
> Package: firefox-3.0 3.0~b5+nobinonly-0ubuntu1
> PackageArchitecture: i386
> ProcEnviron:
>
> PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
> LANG=en_US.UTF-8
> SHELL=/bin/bash
> SourcePackage: firefox-3.0
> Uname: Linux 2.6.24-16-generic i686
>

I can confirm this,
 the difference is like night and day!

Sounds like this might be the culprit.

Did you find that gmail uses this kind of element? This might point directly
to a firefox bug?

Thanks, great work!

2009/5/2 aatdark <email address hidden>

> this is an updated version of the page. It does not contain any
> "position:fixed" element on it.
> as you can see the scrolling is very fast.
>
> http://stinkt.kicks-
> ass.org/1b6cc1af2e8437646c9b7422d78e6eb3/no_css_fix_pos.html
>
> (original page with the position:fixed elements)
>
> http://stinkt.kicks-ass.org/1b6cc1af2e8437646c9b7422d78e6eb3/slidecast%20-%20studio%20-%20vertical-view.html
>
> --
> Slow performance with Gmail
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/217580
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>
> Status in The Mozilla Firefox Browser: Unknown
> Status in XUL + XPCOM application runner: Confirmed
> Status in “firefox-3.0” source package in Ubuntu: Invalid
> Status in “xulrunner-1.9” source package in Ubuntu: Fix Committed
>
> Bug description:
> Binary package hint: firefox-3.0
>
> When scrolling in Gmail (and other websites however its not as noticable)
> the scrolling performance is terrible. There is a slight lag from when it
> starts to scroll to when it actually does scroll. On my Windows XP machine
> it is MUCH faster (basically instant). This is present with both Compiz
> enabled and disabled.
>
> ProblemType: Bug
> Architecture: i386
> Date: Tue Apr 15 01:01:46 2008
> DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.04
> NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
> Package: firefox-3.0 3.0~b5+nobinonly-0ubuntu1
> PackageArchitecture: i386
> ProcEnviron:
>
> PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
> LANG=en_US.UTF-8
> SHELL=/bin/bash
> SourcePackage: firefox-3.0
> Uname: Linux 2.6.24-16-generic i686
>

Excellent work, stek79 and aatdark, thanks a lot.

One question: if the cause is the use of "position:fixed;", can't we use greasemonkey or some other CSS hack to make a workaround while the actual problem isn't fixed ? Does anybody know how to do it ?

>Did you find that gmail uses this kind of element? This might point directly
to a firefox bug?

well. i already said above that fixed positioning is known to have performance issues (and i gave bugzilla IDs above for them); besides from that its also a driver issue, because it works better with some drivers; the fact that other browsers dont hit this, doesn't mean that the drivers are right.

I can confirm these findings on my Ubuntu 9.04 + Nvidia driver GeForce 8600 as well. Also not only does it reduce CPU consumption if I switch to the "nv" open source drivers, but the performance increases dramatically as well.

Sorry Alex,
     I didn't checked the linked bugs actually!

I'm very glad that eventually we all have been able to track this down!

I'm not sure this might be a driver issue, IMHO. So far there have been
reports of users with Nvidia, Intel and ATI cards (fglrx, see first post of
Mozilla bug 422330). A friend of mine keep telling me about this slowness on
ATI + radeonhd, also.

I think that users that own older PCs tends to notice this much more - my
CPU is a 1.6 GHZ AMD Athlon, and scrolling is VERY slugghish. At work I use
a much more recent notebook with ATI + radeon, and the scrolling slowness is
still there, but a bit less relevant.

So, we've likely found the long standing bug that is affecting us, good. On
bugzilla I see the status is NEW, and no more activity since August 2008.

Alex, is there something we can do to speedup this bug fixing? Perhaps
aatdark work can be useful, since it provides a clean testcase? Will FF 3.5
still have this bug?

Thanks

2009/5/2 Alexander Sack <email address hidden>

> >Did you find that gmail uses this kind of element? This might point
> directly
> to a firefox bug?
>
> well. i already said above that fixed positioning is known to have
> performance issues (and i gave bugzilla IDs above for them); besides
> from that its also a driver issue, because it works better with some
> drivers; the fact that other browsers dont hit this, doesn't mean that
> the drivers are right.
>
> --
> Slow performance with Gmail
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/217580
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>
> Status in The Mozilla Firefox Browser: Unknown
> Status in XUL + XPCOM application runner: Confirmed
> Status in “firefox-3.0” source package in Ubuntu: Invalid
> Status in “xulrunner-1.9” source package in Ubuntu: Fix Committed
>
> Bug description:
> Binary package hint: firefox-3.0
>
> When scrolling in Gmail (and other websites however its not as noticable)
> the scrolling performance is terrible. There is a slight lag from when it
> starts to scroll to when it actually does scroll. On my Windows XP machine
> it is MUCH faster (basically instant). This is present with both Compiz
> enabled and disabled.
>
> ProblemType: Bug
> Architecture: i386
> Date: Tue Apr 15 01:01:46 2008
> DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.04
> NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
> Package: firefox-3.0 3.0~b5+nobinonly-0ubuntu1
> PackageArchitecture: i386
> ProcEnviron:
>
> PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
> LANG=en_US.UTF-8
> SHELL=/bin/bash
> SourcePackage: firefox-3.0
> Uname: Linux 2.6.24-16-generic i686
>

Sorry,
    I watched the wrong bug on mozilla.

The culprit, as Sack pointed out, should be this one:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=427431

Great Bernhard, I see that you already pointed out your work, good :)

2009/5/3 Stefano Doni <email address hidden>

> Sorry Alex,
> I didn't checked the linked bugs actually!
>
> I'm very glad that eventually we all have been able to track this down!
>
> I'm not sure this might be a driver issue, IMHO. So far there have been
> reports of users with Nvidia, Intel and ATI cards (fglrx, see first post of
> Mozilla bug 422330). A friend of mine keep telling me about this slowness on
> ATI + radeonhd, also.
>
> I think that users that own older PCs tends to notice this much more - my
> CPU is a 1.6 GHZ AMD Athlon, and scrolling is VERY slugghish. At work I use
> a much more recent notebook with ATI + radeon, and the scrolling slowness is
> still there, but a bit less relevant.
>
>
> So, we've likely found the long standing bug that is affecting us, good. On
> bugzilla I see the status is NEW, and no more activity since August 2008.
>
> Alex, is there something we can do to speedup this bug fixing? Perhaps
> aatdark work can be useful, since it provides a clean testcase? Will FF 3.5
> still have this bug?
>
> Thanks
>
>
> 2009/5/2 Alexander Sack <email address hidden>
>
> >Did you find that gmail uses this kind of element? This might point
>> directly
>> to a firefox bug?
>>
>> well. i already said above that fixed positioning is known to have
>> performance issues (and i gave bugzilla IDs above for them); besides
>> from that its also a driver issue, because it works better with some
>> drivers; the fact that other browsers dont hit this, doesn't mean that
>> the drivers are right.
>>
>> --
>> Slow performance with Gmail
>> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/217580
>> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
>> of the bug.
>>
>> Status in The Mozilla Firefox Browser: Unknown
>> Status in XUL + XPCOM application runner: Confirmed
>> Status in “firefox-3.0” source package in Ubuntu: Invalid
>> Status in “xulrunner-1.9” source package in Ubuntu: Fix Committed
>>
>> Bug description:
>> Binary package hint: firefox-3.0
>>
>> When scrolling in Gmail (and other websites however its not as noticable)
>> the scrolling performance is terrible. There is a slight lag from when it
>> starts to scroll to when it actually does scroll. On my Windows XP machine
>> it is MUCH faster (basically instant). This is present with both Compiz
>> enabled and disabled.
>>
>> ProblemType: Bug
>> Architecture: i386
>> Date: Tue Apr 15 01:01:46 2008
>> DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.04
>> NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
>> Package: firefox-3.0 3.0~b5+nobinonly-0ubuntu1
>> PackageArchitecture: i386
>> ProcEnviron:
>>
>> PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
>> LANG=en_US.UTF-8
>> SHELL=/bin/bash
>> SourcePackage: firefox-3.0
>> Uname: Linux 2.6.24-16-generic i686
>>
>
>

anyone knows if this is a firefox or a xulrunner related problem?
if xulrunner is not the problem i will remove it from the affected projects.

Imho we also have to remove the "fix commited" because this is simply not the case.

> Alex, is there something we can do to speedup this bug fixing? Perhaps
> aatdark work can be useful, since it provides a clean testcase? Will FF 3.5
> still have this bug?

I think the issue is understood upstream - though no fix is proposed yet; anyway, attaching a simple testcase to the right bugzilla bug shouldn't hurt.

It's a GTK2 bug, as pointed by others in this thread:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=427431

I'm almost sure that it also occurs in the Eclipse IDE, when editing reports
using BIRT - scrolling it's as sluggish as in Firefox.

Is there a current Firefox based on Motif or something else not GTK2 ?

On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 2:04 PM, aatdark <email address hidden> wrote:

> anyone knows if this is a firefox or a xulrunner related problem?
> if xulrunner is not the problem i will remove it from the affected
> projects.
>
> Imho we also have to remove the "fix commited" because this is simply
> not the case.
>
> --
> Slow performance with Gmail
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/217580
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

--
Murilo Saraiva de Queiroz, MSc.
Senior Software Engineer
http://www.vettalabs.com
http://www.tecnologiainteligente.com.br
http://www.acalantoemcasa.com.br

I got some news, I checked out Firefox 3.5 Beta 4. It's running a lot of faster, so I tried if the scrolling problem still occurs. It didn't, scrolling was very fast and smooth with not much cpu consumtion :-) So I was happy. Then I returned to my normal Firefox installation shipped with Ubuntu Jaunty and guess what, it did scroll smooth ether.
Is this now fixed in the offical repo and can someone verify this?

This is definitely still an issue for me with
3.0.11+build2+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.9.04.1 AND
3.5~hg20090613r25972+nobinonly-0ubuntu1~umd1~jaunty. To duplicate it I
can just open gmail and open the tasks or a chat pop-up, and scrolling
becomes unbearably slow. Currently I am using chromium-browser for
gmail to work around this.

k, same Firefox Version here (3.0.11+build2+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.9.04.1).

I'm running Ubuntu Jaunty 9.04.1 64 Bit with all updates.
Mhm, maybe it's the video driver. I recently (yesterday) updated my nvidia driver to version 180.60 (from 180.44) so I can use it with the new 2.6.30 kernel. If you have an nvidia card, you should try it. Packages for Jaunty are available:

wget http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/restricted/n/nvidia-graphics-drivers-180/nvidia-180-kernel-source_180.60-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb
wget http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/restricted/n/nvidia-graphics-drivers-180/nvidia-180-libvdpau-dev_180.60-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb
wget http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/restricted/n/nvidia-graphics-drivers-180/nvidia-180-libvdpau_180.60-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb
wget http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/restricted/n/nvidia-graphics-drivers-180/nvidia-glx-180-dev_180.60-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb
wget http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/restricted/n/nvidia-graphics-drivers-180/nvidia-glx-180_180.60-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb

I hope it works, because else I have no clue why it works so smooth now.

gmail is running fast, aatdark's testsite is running smooth, overall every pages runs smooth like opera does :-)

I just recently upgraded to the 185.18.14-0ubuntu1 driver from the
xorg-swat PPA and still experience it with that.

k, this driver is newer than mine. So I don't have any clues why this problem is solved for me :-(

@Michael Rooney
what kernel are you using?

maybe its an kernel - nvidea driver issue.

I mean 2.6.30 may fit with the 180.60
I will investigate this.

@aatdark:

little notice: running 2.6.28-11-generic with 180.60 ( I only tested 2.6.30, my working kernel ist the standard one from jaunty)

> @Michael Rooney
> what kernel are you using?

I am running the standard Jaunty kernel, 2.6.28.11.15.

at least this is fixed in karmic (beta)
same system with jaunty is affected till today (all updates ..)

It is most certainly not fixed in Karmic. Scrolling in Google Reader is even worse for me with 9.10 (x86_64) and FF 3.5. I've tried everything: disabling desktop effects, disabling pango, disabling all plugins (ubuntu extension, flash, etc.), deleting my firefox profile (so it creates a fresh one), switching gnome themes, etc. and nothing fixes the issue.

I don't have much of a problem in Gmail but Google Reader is just terrible. I can see the screen redrawing while I scroll. Using an NVIDIA GX8500 based card with proprietary drivers (I've tried several different versions). Video in the rest of the system seems to be fine and snappy.

@tobiasly
ok i can confirm, that F3.5 has a hard time with the google reader. But its definitly not the same sluggish scrolling issue.
I think the problem of this site is the heavy usage of javascript.

When i start to scroll, firefox just does not repaint the images as fast as (for example chrome ) does.

@tobiasly
you may switch to google's chrome for this particular site (until this bug is fixed) . It's very fast.

@aatdark I don't believe for a moment that this is a JavaScript issue. Yes it makes heavy use of JavaScript but I'd argue that Gmail does more, and Reader is *much* worse for me than Gmail. When Firefox 3.5 launched there was much ado made about how fast its JavaScript performance it, but FF 3.0 in 8.10 worked much better than 3.5 in 9.10 does for me. I think it is more an issue of the specific way that CSS is used on that page.

Would you mind posting the specs for your system (cpu, video card 32/64 bits) if you are experiencing the same issue? Maybe we can figure out a commonality.

And yes, I've been keeping a close eye on Chrome but it's still not usable for everyday browsing on Linux IMO. I really like to customize my browser and Chrome just isn't where Firefox is (yet). Thanks though, hopefully it will get there soon...

@tobiasly
sounds reasonable. My following PC are affected by the "google reader bug"

CPU: intel core 2 duo E6600
RAM: 4 GB
video card: GTS 250 nvidea

notebook
CPU intel T9000
ram 4GB
video: intel gma 4500

not affected:

firefox 3.0.6
Fedora 7 Based
Intel Corporation 82945G/GZ Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 02)
Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.00GHz

(Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; de; rv:1.9.0.6) Gecko/2009020512 Remi/fc7 Firefox/3.0.6)

Hi,

I have the same problem with Google Reader (with Gmail i think no...).The Reader scroll is too slow.

I have a fresh install of Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic with all updates :(

Is this still reproducible for anyone?

I haven't had this issue since probably Intrepid but it seems that others disagree.

I WAS affected too. but since Karmic all things are running fine.

Hi,

I can definitely confirm that since Karmic this is completely resolved!

On Karmic, Firefox scrolling is even *faster* than chromium!

Great work guys!

On 2 March 2010 23:31, aatdark <email address hidden> wrote:

> I WAS affected too. but since Karmic all things are running fine.
>
> --
> Slow performance with Gmail
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/217580
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>
> Status in The Mozilla Firefox Browser: Confirmed
> Status in XUL + XPCOM application runner: Confirmed
> Status in “firefox-3.0” package in Ubuntu: Invalid
> Status in “xulrunner-1.9” package in Ubuntu: Fix Committed
>
> Bug description:
> Binary package hint: firefox-3.0
>
> When scrolling in Gmail (and other websites however its not as noticable)
> the scrolling performance is terrible. There is a slight lag from when it
> starts to scroll to when it actually does scroll. On my Windows XP machine
> it is MUCH faster (basically instant). This is present with both Compiz
> enabled and disabled.
>
> ProblemType: Bug
> Architecture: i386
> Date: Tue Apr 15 01:01:46 2008
> DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.04
> NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
> Package: firefox-3.0 3.0~b5+nobinonly-0ubuntu1
> PackageArchitecture: i386
> ProcEnviron:
>
> PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
> LANG=en_US.UTF-8
> SHELL=/bin/bash
> SourcePackage: firefox-3.0
> Uname: Linux 2.6.24-16-generic i686
>
> To unsubscribe from this bug, go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/firefox/+bug/217580/+subscribe
>

This package has been removed from Ubuntu. Closing all related bugs.