4 ms·

This stuff is seriously irritating to me as well. The other thing that is irritating is websites that take so long to render they freeze up my mouse and comput

This stuff is seriously irritating to me as well. The other thing that is irritating is websites that take so long to render they freeze up my mouse and computer, rendering interaction with their website useless for 10 seconds. It's not like I'm on an old machine either. I tend to show my appreciation by clicking the little "x" on the tab that corresponds to the webpage. There really isn't any good excuse for this stuff: I've seen quite a few sites that clearly use heavy javascript that render almost instantly. There is no reason that a blog or simple site should take a long time to render. There seems to be a trend of making things "awesome" with no consideration of user-experience and usability, and frankly, the designers and programmers who do this stuff make the good programmers look bad and ultimately hold back the progress of the web. And I don't use Google Fonts either because I'd rather have my fonts installed locally.

pfisch 14y ago
What OS/browser are you using? I have no idea what you are talking about. The only time I have ever seen anything like what you are describing is when maybe something is messed up with flash or an external pdf viewer. But even that doesn't freeze up the mouse. Also I am a pretty heavy browser user, I have 20+ tabs open on average and a bunch of plugins.
- wiradikusuma 14y ago
  I also experience that randomly, using Chrome on Win7 and Snow Leopard. The freezing can be up to 30sec that I sometimes think my system hangs.
  - Shish2k 14y ago
    If a web page can freeze your whole OS, I'd think there's something wrong with your OS...
- dizzystar 14y ago
  Usually use Chrome on a Win7. I've seen this happen about once a day or every other day. Comment got upvotes so I guess I'm not alone in this experience?
  - deanclatworthy 14y ago
    This doesn't happen to me either. Same environment. Unless your can provide a reproducible test-case your comment is baseless.
  - glogla 14y ago
    This happens to me with Chrome on Mac OS.
- pfisch 14y ago
  I use firefox and chrome. Does this also happen to anyone using ff?
  - epsylon 14y ago
    Happens a lot to me on Firefox / Windows 7.
snogglethorpe 14y ago
The main reason I ever see this sort of thing is because my (modest, but not crazily slow) machine doesn't have enough memory—it only has 1GB, which definitely isn't enough for multiple tabs with typical bloated websites these days. If I've got gmail, youtube, and a few other tabs open, my machine will happily thrash it's little disk-drive out to accomodate them.... >< [This is especially true if you're using chrome, which tends to use more memory per tab than other browsers because of its process-per-tab architecture (which is nice because of the isolation and controllability it gives, but it does make it more difficult to share memory between tabs).] If I were in charge (I'm not because it's a work machine), the first thing I'd do is buy more memory.
- dizzystar 14y ago
  I'm running an i5 w/ 6 Gig of RAM. I'm pretty obsessed with keeping my machine clean as well, so I'm not entirely sure if it is the slow machine, but idk really.
fauigerzigerk 14y ago
It's all about monetization. If you look at the source of a typical media website you'll see that most of what gets downloaded and most of the JavaScript executed on page load is adverts, social crap and analytics stuff. It's just how we pay for those services.
- pavs 14y ago
  Nowadays most major analytics and ads are served asynchronously.
  - cheald 14y ago
    The hitching frequently happens because adding iframes to a document is damned expensive, and requires the browser to concoct a whole new DOM per iframe. While analytics don't tend to make heavy use of iframes, advertisements absolutely do.
  - fauigerzigerk 14y ago
    Yes, but that doesn't help much against the JavaScriptional (and rendering) bout of hyperactivity that that ensues shortly after the first HTTP response and later on while using the site. The complexity of embedding all that stuff is enormous. Just block it all for a day and see what that does to the perceived speed of the site.
    - pavs 14y ago
      I have found the biggest culprits are the social widgets and fancy js library. Ads and analytics rarely slows down a site (for me). There are exception though like few days ago I bumper in to a site that had 6 different analytics. That's just crazy, also outside widgets can load their own analytics (I think disqus does that). Things can quickly turn dirty.
  - pbhjpbhj 14y ago
    I was working on a page the other day for optimisation - 97/100 score now. The main issues that remain are to do with FB, Google - serve images from a consistent domain, - leverage browser caching, - minify javascript (that's a Google problem, I mean, really?!), - ga.js and plusone causing reflows - script serialisation Doesn't appear there's much to be done about these from an end user perspective but they're not major slow downs as the page is well above the median load speed for similar pages.
anoncow 14y ago
Google apps locks up frequently on my atom netbook.
mattmanser 14y ago
You're a programmer, surely you must realize this is a Chrome bug? Not specific web page bug? Personally it affects one of my PC's but not the other. I've tried to fix it a couple of times but because it's very infrequent it's hard to test a fix. Google 'Chrome Freeze' to see the frequency with which this happens. This isn't being caused by web pages, it's a bug in Chrome that they can't seem to fix. It used to be caused by having two versions of Flash installed, but who knows what it is now. It gets worse/better over time.
- dizzystar 14y ago
  You'll thank your lucky stars with the knowledge that I am not a professional programmer and I'm definitely not a front-end or much of a web programmer. Besides, there are others page down who seem to experience this problem, presumably some of them are programmers who aren't aware of this bug? With this information, I am now more mystified at why some sites get burned by this bug while others do not, and, at least with your logic, why a programmer wouldn't be well aware of this bug; if they are, why aren't they exploring options and why aren't these programmers testing their functionality on Chrome (all browsers). Surely, these sites run slow on FF as well even if there is no freezing up like I am describing?
  - rapind 14y ago
    With Chrome I find that all the slow downs / freezes I've noticed have been while flash is running in one or more of my tabs. Flash + Chrome just doesn't seem to be a great combination. BTW, you can disable flash in chrome by going to: chrome:plugins
  - mattmanser 14y ago
    Ah ok, I totally misread your profile. Those sites won't freeze at all in FF. It's something going wrong in the way Chrome calls Flash or something.
- mindcrime 14y ago
  No, there are plenty of JS heavy pages that can all but bring Firefox to its knees as well, and - if the machine is heavily loaded already - basically freeze the entire machine. I surf using both Chrome and Firefox at different times on different boxes, and I see this behaviour across both.
Al-Khwarizmi 14y ago
This happens to me sometimes in Opera, Chrome and Firefox, and it's extremely irritating. I remember the good old days when dual-core processors were just starting to become mainstream, and browsers would just use one core. The browser could crash all it liked, but the system would always be responsive. But now browsers take advantage of all cores, meaning that if they crash, they can block your entire system. I wish there was a way of telling the browser to strictly use only K cores on Windows. I'd instantly switch to a browser offering that feature.
- ashray 14y ago
  Not a windows user here but I remember that you can do something like this using Task Manager. Just right click on the process and see if you can set the CPU affinity or something similar for your browser.
  - philbarr 14y ago
    Fantastic tip, thanks! Right click the process and "Set Affinity..."
Mahn 14y ago
Are you sure it's not just flash (from e.g. ads) acting up? On my win7 laptop the only time I saw pages freeze was due to a plugin conflict where somehow flash managed to install itself twice as a plugin; disabling one of these would usually fix it. Or, you know, just try disabling flash altogether and see if there's a difference.

pfisch 14y ago

What OS/browser are you using? I have no idea what you are talking about. The only time I have ever seen anything like what you are describing is when maybe something is messed up with flash or an external pdf viewer. But even that doesn't freeze up the mouse. Also I am a pretty heavy browser user, I have 20+ tabs open on average and a bunch of plugins.

wiradikusuma 14y ago
I also experience that randomly, using Chrome on Win7 and Snow Leopard. The freezing can be up to 30sec that I sometimes think my system hangs.
- Shish2k 14y ago
  If a web page can freeze your whole OS, I'd think there's something wrong with your OS...
dizzystar 14y ago
Usually use Chrome on a Win7. I've seen this happen about once a day or every other day. Comment got upvotes so I guess I'm not alone in this experience?
- deanclatworthy 14y ago
  This doesn't happen to me either. Same environment. Unless your can provide a reproducible test-case your comment is baseless.
- glogla 14y ago
  This happens to me with Chrome on Mac OS.
pfisch 14y ago
I use firefox and chrome. Does this also happen to anyone using ff?
- epsylon 14y ago
  Happens a lot to me on Firefox / Windows 7.

snogglethorpe 14y ago

The main reason I ever see this sort of thing is because my (modest, but not crazily slow) machine doesn't have enough memory—it only has 1GB, which definitely isn't enough for multiple tabs with typical bloated websites these days. If I've got gmail, youtube, and a few other tabs open, my machine will happily thrash it's little disk-drive out to accomodate them.... >< [This is especially true if you're using chrome, which tends to use more memory per tab than other browsers because of its process-per-tab architecture (which is nice because of the isolation and controllability it gives, but it does make it more difficult to share memory between tabs).] If I were in charge (I'm not because it's a work machine), the first thing I'd do is buy more memory.

dizzystar 14y ago
I'm running an i5 w/ 6 Gig of RAM. I'm pretty obsessed with keeping my machine clean as well, so I'm not entirely sure if it is the slow machine, but idk really.

fauigerzigerk 14y ago

It's all about monetization. If you look at the source of a typical media website you'll see that most of what gets downloaded and most of the JavaScript executed on page load is adverts, social crap and analytics stuff. It's just how we pay for those services.

pavs 14y ago
Nowadays most major analytics and ads are served asynchronously.
- cheald 14y ago
  The hitching frequently happens because adding iframes to a document is damned expensive, and requires the browser to concoct a whole new DOM per iframe. While analytics don't tend to make heavy use of iframes, advertisements absolutely do.
- fauigerzigerk 14y ago
  Yes, but that doesn't help much against the JavaScriptional (and rendering) bout of hyperactivity that that ensues shortly after the first HTTP response and later on while using the site. The complexity of embedding all that stuff is enormous. Just block it all for a day and see what that does to the perceived speed of the site.
  - pavs 14y ago
    I have found the biggest culprits are the social widgets and fancy js library. Ads and analytics rarely slows down a site (for me). There are exception though like few days ago I bumper in to a site that had 6 different analytics. That's just crazy, also outside widgets can load their own analytics (I think disqus does that). Things can quickly turn dirty.
- pbhjpbhj 14y ago
  I was working on a page the other day for optimisation - 97/100 score now. The main issues that remain are to do with FB, Google - serve images from a consistent domain, - leverage browser caching, - minify javascript (that's a Google problem, I mean, really?!), - ga.js and plusone causing reflows - script serialisation Doesn't appear there's much to be done about these from an end user perspective but they're not major slow downs as the page is well above the median load speed for similar pages.

anoncow 14y ago

Google apps locks up frequently on my atom netbook.

mattmanser 14y ago

You're a programmer, surely you must realize this is a Chrome bug? Not specific web page bug? Personally it affects one of my PC's but not the other. I've tried to fix it a couple of times but because it's very infrequent it's hard to test a fix. Google 'Chrome Freeze' to see the frequency with which this happens. This isn't being caused by web pages, it's a bug in Chrome that they can't seem to fix. It used to be caused by having two versions of Flash installed, but who knows what it is now. It gets worse/better over time.

dizzystar 14y ago
You'll thank your lucky stars with the knowledge that I am not a professional programmer and I'm definitely not a front-end or much of a web programmer. Besides, there are others page down who seem to experience this problem, presumably some of them are programmers who aren't aware of this bug? With this information, I am now more mystified at why some sites get burned by this bug while others do not, and, at least with your logic, why a programmer wouldn't be well aware of this bug; if they are, why aren't they exploring options and why aren't these programmers testing their functionality on Chrome (all browsers). Surely, these sites run slow on FF as well even if there is no freezing up like I am describing?
- rapind 14y ago
  With Chrome I find that all the slow downs / freezes I've noticed have been while flash is running in one or more of my tabs. Flash + Chrome just doesn't seem to be a great combination. BTW, you can disable flash in chrome by going to: chrome:plugins
- mattmanser 14y ago
  Ah ok, I totally misread your profile. Those sites won't freeze at all in FF. It's something going wrong in the way Chrome calls Flash or something.
mindcrime 14y ago
No, there are plenty of JS heavy pages that can all but bring Firefox to its knees as well, and - if the machine is heavily loaded already - basically freeze the entire machine. I surf using both Chrome and Firefox at different times on different boxes, and I see this behaviour across both.

Al-Khwarizmi 14y ago

This happens to me sometimes in Opera, Chrome and Firefox, and it's extremely irritating. I remember the good old days when dual-core processors were just starting to become mainstream, and browsers would just use one core. The browser could crash all it liked, but the system would always be responsive. But now browsers take advantage of all cores, meaning that if they crash, they can block your entire system. I wish there was a way of telling the browser to strictly use only K cores on Windows. I'd instantly switch to a browser offering that feature.

ashray 14y ago
Not a windows user here but I remember that you can do something like this using Task Manager. Just right click on the process and see if you can set the CPU affinity or something similar for your browser.
- philbarr 14y ago
  Fantastic tip, thanks! Right click the process and "Set Affinity..."

Mahn 14y ago

Are you sure it's not just flash (from e.g. ads) acting up? On my win7 laptop the only time I saw pages freeze was due to a plugin conflict where somehow flash managed to install itself twice as a plugin; disabling one of these would usually fix it. Or, you know, just try disabling flash altogether and see if there's a difference.