I haven’t done much investigation to figure out exactly what new doohickey is causing this, but a few weeks ago, browsing the board on my phone (an Android phone) got super sucky. I suspect it’s some of the new ShareThisDiggStumbliciousFriendbookster crap that’s dynamically loading and causing extra HTTP requests for every thread page (it only happens when viewing a thread page – not on the forum pages or on the User CP, for example).
Previously, loading a thread page on my phone took about 10 seconds and was very consistent. The progress bar would load about 2/3 of the way in a couple of seconds, pause for 5 or 6 seconds, then go to 100%, pause for a couple more seconds, then disappear. Now, it’s still very consistent, but consistently much suckier: The progress bar takes 10 seconds to get to about 2/3 complete, then waits 5 or 6 more seconds, then fills to 100%, waits a couple more seconds, then starts over and takes another 10-15 seconds to finish loading the page.
For the nerds in the audience, my hunch is that the first time the progress bar loads, the page and all its external resources are loaded, but then some script running in the page load causes a new resource to be loaded dynamically, perhaps via XHR or something.
Anyway, some day I might investigate this further, but for the time being, browsing the SDMB on my phone basically completely sucks and I just thought I should mention it in case someone is actually concerned about the impact all the new wiz-bang useless bullshit is causing. And before anyone suggests it, I’m not buying the tapatalk app.
I’m typing this post on my Android phone. The board loaded in under a second. I don’t dispute your experiences though. I’ll see if we can figure out what the deal is with this.
Wait, we have this stuff now? I don’t see it. (I *am *running AdBlock, but it doesn’t block that stuff on other sites, so I don’t think it’s blocking it here…) Where is it, exactly? Or does it only show up on phones?
Clogging up the tubes? Surely they wouln’t be actually contacting each of their services. And I fail to see why the number or rarity of a bunch of links would be relevant.
The only problem that should be able to be caused by the button is the page going ahead and loading it before you click on it, and the server it is loading from being busy, and, thus, slow. And this is something that their FAQ can teach the board how to fix. Load the javacript onclick.
Surely you’re not completely unaware of the phenomenon that is “web 2.0.” The addthis servers are contacted a whole bunch of times during a thread page load. One of those times is to fetch a 75kB javascript file which dynamically builds the menu long before you click on it. This is the way the web works these days. Your suggestion of waiting until you click on the share menu until you load all of its resources is usually considered unacceptable to the folks that develop this whizzy crap because then the menu would take a long time to respond when you did click it, or it would pop up and you’d see all the icons loading, etc.
Actually, I can think of other reasons besides their servers being slow. For example, loading an SDMB page now involves about 70 HTTP requests to a dozen different servers. Each of those server names has to be looked up, and if DNS is just a little slow, that adds a lot to the page load time. This is one reason when you optimize pages you try to load as much as you can from a small set of servers if possible. And 70 HTTP requests?!? Come on, that may load in 1 second flat on my desktop computer, but over a mobile network, 70+ network round trips is expensive (speaking in terms of load time, not dollars and cents). (GFactor, I’m willing to bet you’re talking about 1 second over wifi unless you’re signed up for an early beta of 6G wireless internet service).
I tried to load the board on my phone (HTC EVO) with Opera Mini 5 beta–as opposed to the browser that came with the phone–and I had a problem similar to the one you describe. From what I’ve seen, the problem I was able to replicate is related to tapatalk and Opera Mini–not the share stuff. OTOH, you may be having a different problem. I could also be completely full of shit. I dunno.
Sorry to hear you’re having problems, ntucker. I’ll see what I can do, but I can’t promise a quick resolution. We get two kinds of problems reported to us, global and local. The global ones affect everybody and are easier to track down. Local problems affect relatively few users and are often the result of a conflict between something on our end and a peculiarity of the user’s system. Your problem appears to fall into the latter category. As you can see not all Android users are having the same issue. Assuming there’s nothing unusual about your phone, I have to guess something’s up with your mobile network.
Then again, maybe it’s something on the phone. I notice that the “share” options display differently on different browsers. In Firefox, for example, I get a box with a dozen choices; in AOL, I get a new page with hundreds of choices. I don’t know why that should be; if there’s some equivalent on a phone (a different app?) perhaps it would affect loading speed. I’ll ask xash, who installed this feature, but he took a new job and has been difficult to reach. The other tech support options available to me are limited. Your patience is requested.
It’s a T-Mobile G1. The oldest, slowest Android phone there is. But I will remind you that I’ve been reading the SDMB on it for 18 months and it’s only recently that it’s gotten so godawful slow. Note that it’s not the mobile network, either, because I get this same behavior over wifi. I’d be willing to bet it’s the amount of script running in the page and the number of HTTP requests being made.
Agreed 100% – I have not actually narrowed the problem down to the share stuff, so that may be a red herring. What I do know is that the problem appeared around the time you guys started turning on various bells and whistles.
I know it’s difficult to debug this sort of problem when it’s only happening to a few people. My point in bringing it up here is not to demand that it get fixed, but rather to point out that the more gizmos you throw on, the more you potentially make the site suck. As mentioned in another thread I really hope you’re tracking how often these features actually get used by people, because I’d hate to have my experience degrade just so we can have a cute gizmo that sounds neat but nobody actually uses.
BTW, Yahoo makes a firefox plugin called YSlow that analyzes a page and grades its performance based on objective criteria (that is, it doesn’t depend on things like connection speed to make its judgement). I just ran it on an SDMB thread page and it gives you an F. The first piece of advice it gives is “make fewer HTTP requests.”
I’m using a regular PC, not any type of phone, but I’ve noticed a poorer performance these past couple of weeks. It’s the same problem each time: The Board starts out okay, then after 30 minutes or an hour, it starts not loading pages whenever I click on a thread or try to reply. Sometimes refreshing works, sometimes I have to go back and click again. This happens only with this site.
And what I don’t get is why it would need to do that. I would think the 70 requests would have more to do with the new link processing than something that is just supposed to send your link to a service when you click on it. Once someone has decided to which service they’ll share, there would be no reason they won’t wait a bit for it to get to that service. Loading the ShareThis javascript should be the only extra HTTP request. (and could be handled on the IP level, rather than needing a DNS request).
And their website does cover only loading the Javascript on click, although I’ve never been able to get it to work. I went through a lot of testing trying to help xash out. But how hard should it be to make a javascript that only writes the Share code after the page has already loaded? I can do it in Greasemonkey.
Finally, it seems the problem is only happening with people using high ping connections like 3G*. So maybe providing a way to disable the feature for mobile viewers would be sufficient. Again, you can create a javascript to do this quite easily. Just do a browser check and disable it for mobile browsers. Or use a cookie that allows certain users to opt out.**
Also, there’s no reason for all of these links. You can tweak the share list to be a lot smaller. But, again, there should not be extra HTTP requests for each share site.
*I didn’t see Siam Sam’s post before I started writing this. But he’s overseas, and not in one of the major overseas countries. His ping is likely high, too. I know that a lot of places don’t pay for overseas views, but even if this does, it’s not a large audience to be losing. People in the major overseas countries don’t seem to be having problems. Let those in minor ones have a good connection.
**The majority seem to be paid users, which should help offset the balance.
