Firefox Javascript performance

[Phil]

I'm sure everyone has by now noticed that this site has less than stellar performance inside firefox. I've used it on at high and low bandwidths (At school, and across DSL) and in both cases, this site just drags its feet getting loaded (It loads a lot faster in IE, which has [for now] a faster JS engine). I'm still running Firefox 2, but I've heard that Firefox 3 will have significantly improved javascript execution speed, which will help sites like this one a lot. Has anyone played with FF3 yet?

[Ashok Gelal]

That's true. BoiseUbuntu takes a lot of time to get loaded. Since I'm using Hardy and it comes with Firefox 3 Beta. Firefox 3 is very speedy. BoiseUbuntu page loads like a Google home page ;-)

For those who are interested in trying out Firefox 3 can have fun without removing Firefox 2. Here is how:
#wget http ://mozilla.isc.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/3.0b5/linux-i686/en-GB/firefox-3.0b5.tar.bz2
It creates a firefox directory in your home page. Double click firefox. A dialog box pops up. Click Run to start using Firefox 3
Don't forget to close Firefox 2 broswer before launching Firefox 3 and most important of all - don't foget to backup ~/.mozilla/Firefox otherwise you will endup complaing against Trent! (He's the one who opened this group so all the credits and complants should go to his pocket ;-) )

[Phil]

I just loaded up Firefox 3, and the site is MUCH more responsive. The only downside is that FireFTP isn't available for firefox 3 yet, and it's one of the few extensions I actually use. :P

[Trent Cutler]

Phil, its too bad you missed last week, Ashok told us how to get old firefox extensions working in FF3. but this link might get you somewhere!

http://lifehacker.com/355973/make-your-extensions-work-with-the-fir...

[Phil]

Thanks! That's great. It seems to be working just fine!

[Ashok Gelal]

Or give this extension a try: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6543

[Ashok Gelal]

I, for once, doubted that either of photo widget or Google calendar was the main culprit. I watched the performance of the page load (esp. CPU load) after removing both of them. I found that neither of them is the main culprit :-( (No good news for Firefox2 users)

I also suspect the front page Google Ads for the slow performance. I've a little hack to remove the ad from the front page but it seems that Ning's EULA doesn't allow anyone to play with its income source. But I'm very curious and when no members are online, I will give it a try for a couple of seconds (just refreshing the browser is what it takes).

[Trent Cutler]

thanks for looking into this Ashok. If it is going to be an issue maybe we can talk about paying the 8 dollars to have the ads removed.

[Phil]

Have you tried AdBlocking the Google ads? I'm not sure it would really help performance, though, since the Javascript is still processed, and the final iframes are what AdBlock filters out.

[Ashok Gelal]

Here are some of the findings:
Culprits:
Google Ads -> when removed CPU load comes down to 85% (from 100%+!), pages loads about 1.4 times faster
Video Widget -> CPU load drops down by about 4%, page loads about 1.2 times faster
Photo Widget -> CPU load drops down by about 3%, page loads about 1.1 times faster

Firefox2 user can use the Fasterfox extension to speed up page loading (though it doesn't bring down CPU and memory loads). But any pages loads much faster.