[gentoo-user] mozilla consume a lot of X resource and made our company in difficult situation

[Zhang Weiwu]

Hello. This is the strange behavor happend recently in our company. We
use a centralized X-client computer and several dozens of X-terminals
for the clerks. Everything works fine untill we upgraded our intranet
web application.

the new web application is very slow on Mozilla (behavior described in
the attached message) but fast on Opera / IE. However the web
application have other problems with Opera, for IE because we use Linux
X-terminal, we cannot do it. These X-terminals takes 30 seconds to open
any page in the web application / any scrolling takes another 30
seconds, not acceptable at all!

It took us several days to discover the reason of slowdown. It's clear
1) when the page is slow, X uses much more CPU resource then mozilla. 2)
the speed is determined by the X-Server (X-terminal) CPU speed /rather
then/ the X-client (X-terminal server) speed. For example, if I connect
to X-client (X-terminal server) with my 2.5GHz desktop, the webpage is
not slow. Also, when the X-terminal busy 30 seconds for drawing web
application, there are lots of IDLE cpu resource on the X-client
(X-terminal server).

This really surpised me because I thought most reason affecting X speed
is the CPU time of X-client.

To solve this problem, perhaps I can choose from:

1) compile a special version of mozilla to not to use much X-server
resource (if mozilla has this compile option)
2) to pay for extra development on the web application so that it fully
works with Opera (very troublesome, going to cost a lot)
3) replace the current X-terminals with windows terminals so we could
run IE (this is a big money, also for licensing cost)
4) replace the current X-terminals with full CPU power workstations
(this costs even bigger money)

To me 1) is the cheapest way. Any suggestions help us out?

I also heard of someone talking VNC, could this technique help us?

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: firefox/mozilla extremely slow (comparing to IE and opera) for
my web application?
Date: Sun, 03 Jul 2005 15:39:17 +0800
From: Zhang Weiwu <zhangweiwu@××××××.com>
Newsgroups: netscape.public.mozilla.browser

Hello. Is it okay to ask question regarding to web authoring?

I have a web application that some users reported being extremely slow
on mozilla/firefox, and it seems the earlier versions of them are
slower. Take an example, with 1.2GMhz CPU it takes 8 seconds after user
clicked a selection list until the list pops up, but on IE & Opera this
happen in a flash. With an 2.4GMhz CPU it takes 3 or 4 seconds to pop up
any selection list. Scrolling is very slow too, as well as repaiting
(after switched to another application and switch back to the browser).

Javascript problem comes to my mind first, but even if javascript is
disabled, the speed is not getting any faster. The web interface is very
complicated to analyze, to put it simple, I can describe the main
characteristic of my web application:

The interface mainly consist of several layers fixed on certain
positions on the browser window (by using position:absolute), and a
scrollable layer behind them. E.g. several big DIV with position
absolute and z-index 10, and one big DIV with position absolute but
z-index:0 Besides this main difference, I don't see anything very
particular on my webpages.

A very-similar-in-concept webpage to my web application (but much
simpler) can be found here:
http://www.stunicholls.myby.co.uk/layouts/body2.html

Could this be the reason of being slow? Is this going to be enhanced in
the next release of gecko/firefox/mozilla?

If anyone is interested in help me dig out the reason (and may help
improve mozilla as well), I am happy to give you access to my web
application used in my company.
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