Closed Bug 242426 Opened 20 years ago Closed 18 years ago

Firefox becomes extremely slow when sites with large images are opened

Categories

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Product:
Firefox
Component:
General
Platform:
x86
Windows XP
Type:
defect
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
major

Tracking

()

Status:
RESOLVED WORKSFORME

People

(Reporter: ajunne, Assigned: bugzilla)

References

Details

(Keywords: perf) 

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8a) Gecko/20040428 Firefox/0.8.0+
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8a) Gecko/20040428 Firefox/0.8.0+

Opening multiple sites (either in multiple browser windows or multiple tabs)
with a lot of pretty large pictures in them make Firefox extremely slow, almost
to the point of freezing the entire PC.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open up multiple pages with lots of large images (jpgs for example)
Actual Results:  
The computer becomes very slow, need to cache a lot of memory on the disk.
PC almost freezes, closing Firefox windows is very slow.

Expected Results:  
PC should slow down a bit due to increased browser usage, but not that much. In
comparison: Internet Explorer can cope with a lot of these heavy pages without
slowing down as much as Firefox.
Can you give a site where this is happening?
I have two computers. One of them has this problem. I wonder if it's related 
to RAM. I'm not sure. 

I've found this page: www.csstut.dontexist.com  to scroll VERY slow on the 
oldest computer. It runs fine at my newest computer. The best way to test 
this, is to make a page with lots of jpg's (around 200kb large at resolutions 
700x800 or similar). Firefox will then get VERY slow when loading this, almost 
locking up completely. If you try scrolling you will see that it locks up for 
sure, and all other windows will lock up.

Loading the same pages in IE works fine.
(In reply to comment #1)
> Can you give a site where this is happening?

This is one site where the large background image slows down firefox 1.0 PR. 
http://www.kdge.com/main.html

the background image is 1004x620 px size. unfortunately works fine in IE.
(In reply to comment #3)
> (In reply to comment #1)
> > Can you give a site where this is happening?
> 
> This is one site where the large background image slows down firefox 1.0 PR. 
> http://www.kdge.com/main.html
> 
> the background image is 1004x620 px size. unfortunately works fine in IE.

(In reply to comment #3)
> (In reply to comment #1)
> > Can you give a site where this is happening?
> 
> This is one site where the large background image slows down firefox 1.0 PR. 
> http://www.kdge.com/main.html
> 
> the background image is 1004x620 px size. unfortunately works fine in IE.
This page http://fahmon.silent-blade.org/ scrolls very slow in Firefox 0.10.1
until the PNGs at the top are no longer displayed on screen.

I don't have any problems with http://www.kdge.com/main.html though.
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.6) Gecko/20050317
Firefox/1.0.2

I have the same problem with both those sites.
www.rammstein.com is the worst I have found. It's barely browseable.
But their site have a feature: when you're browser window is narrower than 1024
px their 800x600 design pops up, which has less imagery than the original. And
that version also a bit faster (but not normal speed). So surely i'ts couse of
the images.

I also recently made a website where I had a ~500x500 px background (GIF) in
<body> and when I had no-repeat, repeat-y or repeat-x it was slow too, but not
at all when you removed the no-repeat and let it repeat over both x- and y-axis...

You notice it's slow when you resize browser window or scroll with the thing
where you click a middle mouse button and you just drag your mouse and click
again to stop the scrolling.
It's a bit faster when you use the scrollbar.
(In reply to comment #6)
> Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.6) Gecko/20050317
> Firefox/1.0.2
> 
> I have the same problem with both those sites.
> www.rammstein.com is the worst I have found. It's barely browseable.
> But their site have a feature: when you're browser window is narrower than 1024
> px their 800x600 design pops up, which has less imagery than the original. And
> that version also a bit faster (but not normal speed). So surely i'ts couse of
> the images.
> 
> I also recently made a website where I had a ~500x500 px background (GIF) in
> <body> and when I had no-repeat, repeat-y or repeat-x it was slow too, but not
> at all when you removed the no-repeat and let it repeat over both x- and y-axis...
> 
> You notice it's slow when you resize browser window or scroll with the thing
> where you click a middle mouse button and you just drag your mouse and click
> again to stop the scrolling.
> It's a bit faster when you use the scrollbar.

WFM on Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8b2) Gecko/20050418
Firefox/1.0+

Which video card do you use and what's it like about your PC spec?
(In reply to comment #7)
> (In reply to comment #6)
> > Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.6) Gecko/20050317
> > Firefox/1.0.2
> > 
> > I have the same problem with both those sites.
> > www.rammstein.com is the worst I have found. It's barely browseable.
> > But their site have a feature: when you're browser window is narrower than 1024
> > px their 800x600 design pops up, which has less imagery than the original. And
> > that version also a bit faster (but not normal speed). So surely i'ts couse of
> > the images.
> > 
> > I also recently made a website where I had a ~500x500 px background (GIF) in
> > <body> and when I had no-repeat, repeat-y or repeat-x it was slow too, but not
> > at all when you removed the no-repeat and let it repeat over both x- and
y-axis...
> > 
> > You notice it's slow when you resize browser window or scroll with the thing
> > where you click a middle mouse button and you just drag your mouse and click
> > again to stop the scrolling.
> > It's a bit faster when you use the scrollbar.
> 
> WFM on Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8b2) Gecko/20050418
> Firefox/1.0+
> 
> Which video card do you use and what's it like about your PC spec?

NVIDIA GeFore4 Ti 4800

What do you mean "what's it like about your PC spec"?
nvidia has known problems with firefox's handling of certain types of images.
This situation was improved in bug 284716. Try again on a recent trunk build.
(In reply to comment #9)
> nvidia has known problems with firefox's handling of certain types of images.
> This situation was improved in bug 284716. Try again on a recent trunk build.

Using: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8b2) Gecko/20050422
Firefox/1.0+

Awesome!

It's much better now!
It's still a bit slow on http://www.rammstein.com/, but not as unbrowseable as
before.

I tried http://www.world-direct.at/mozilla/dhtml/75121/anim-test.htm
and got 1578ms.
Guess what I got with 1.0.3? 5594ms!!

Thanks for your work, guys!
Yeah, it's pretty cool. How does the performance compare with other browsers
(IE/Opera)? If it's performing similarly, this bug can be closed.

btw, please don't quote other messages unless absolutely necessary.
IE: 1562, 1562, 1562
FF (no tab): 1531, 1500, 1516
FF (5 tabs): 1734, 1688, 1687
Opera 8 (no tab): 1859, 1859, 1890

Pretty similair, except that it's a little slower with more tabs and that Opera
sucks. ;)
*** Bug 296143 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Confirming based on other bugs.
Status: UNCONFIRMED → NEW
Ever confirmed: true
Robin: what is the bug you're confirming? There was an issue, which has been
fixed (see comment 12). It's not clear what bugs are left, and what sites can be
used to reproduce the problem.
The reason I confirmed it, is because Bug 296143 is the same issue, but was
found and filed later than the supposed fixed date of this bug.  Leading me to
think:
a) That this bug wasn't completly fixed (as there is no offical patch)
b) That a regression occured
c) That this bug may be system specific or graphic card specific.

Just my thoughts.
FYI, the bug that fixed major problems for nVidia on windows is bug 284716. I'm
still not sure what is the issue you confirmed, and why bug 296143 was duped to
this. I think this should be resolved/WFM (per comment 12) and bug 296143 should
be reopened and figured out separately.
(In reply to comment #17)
> FYI, the bug that fixed major problems for nVidia on windows is bug 284716. I'm
> still not sure what is the issue you confirmed, and why bug 296143 was duped to
> this. I think this should be resolved/WFM (per comment 12) and bug 296143 should
> be reopened and figured out separately.

I am having the same problem. I especially have problems when pages contain
thumbnail links to .jpg images, even attachments on Yahoo! e-mails. I am running
on a Windows 2k, 5.00.2195 SP 4, 1.8 MHz processor, 512 mb RAM, with an ATI
Radeon x800 w/ 512mb RAM; thus, I don't think that it's system or graphic card
specific.
(In reply to comment #18)

> 
> I am having the same problem. I especially have problems when pages contain
> thumbnail links to .jpg images, even attachments on Yahoo! e-mails. I am running
> on a Windows 2k, 5.00.2195 SP 4, 1.8 MHz processor, 512 mb RAM, with an ATI
> Radeon x800 w/ 512mb RAM; thus, I don't think that it's system or graphic card
> specific.

I forgot to add that the CPU Usage meter in the Windows Task Manager is
typically showing 100% during the slowdown time.
I repeatedly had the same problem, and I think at least part of the problem has 
to do with memory management (cf. Bug 130157 ). As a test case, I locally 
created a page showing 20 MB of JPGs. I also created a copy of that page, 
including all images, in another directory.

When I open the page using Firefox 1.0.6, memory usage increases by 350 MB. The 
same happens when I use Internet Explorer instead, so that's probably the 
uncompressed size of the images and not a problem. Both browsers take some time 
to load the page -- IE is slightly better, but the difference is not too large.

Now, when I continue to open the copied page in the same browser window, things 
are different: Firefox allocates _additional_ 350 MB of memory to show the 
page, bringing the system almost to halt because of constant swapping (my 
system has 512 MB of memory). It takes more than a minute to load the page and 
FF is almost unresponsive during that time. Only some time after the copied 
page has been completely loaded, memory uses falls by 350 MB, indicating that 
the memory once needed for the first page has been released.

IE handles this much better, I'm sorry to say: when opening the copied page, 
memory usage increases by 50 MB, than falls by 350 MB, than increases by 
additional 300 MB. So here the memory no longer required for the old page is 
freed much earlier, avoiding the swapping. IE finishes loading the copied page 
much faster, and even while it is still loading it reacts smoother on user 
actions.

If it was possible to release no-longer-used memory immediately, as IE does, it 
would probably help a lot...
Whenever I veiw a website with a large amount of animated images, including java
applications, I get a massive amount of lag. I've put together 2 pages, one with
animation and one without.
[url=http://www.metaldev.net/firefox/bugs/animation_lag/animation.html]The page
with animation[/url] brings my CPU Usage up to 100%, yet when I veiw it with IE,
there is no lag issue, and theres only 30% CPU Usage.
[url=http://www.metaldev.net/firefox/bugs/animation_lag/no-animation.html]The
page without animation[/url] works perfectly fine.
this is verry anoying, plz fix this
This is not related to images at all. It's related to Firefox's (or Mozilla's)
memory management. Just try to open a VERY large .txt-file (e.g. 20MB from
internet). The browser will go NUTS on CPU-usage, and completely lag windows,
where you are barely able to kill firefox.exe 
If this isn't related to images at all, explain this:
Why does this page:
http://www.metaldev.net/firefox/bugs/animation_lag/animation.html
lag and bring the CPU usage up to 100%, when this page:
http://www.metaldev.net/firefox/bugs/animation_lag/no-animation.html
doesn't? Both the pages takes up around the same amount of memory.

Also, how do you know that it is a problem with memory management? Have you
actually looked at the source code and found the problem?
i just guessed bro. 
Alright, I think I'm gonna remake this one because the summary of the problem is
horrible, and most people relate the problem to Firefox's memory allocation.
And it is extremly slow when open big text-files too. It seem the sampe prolem
like with images.
WFM on Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9a1) Gecko/20060917 Minefield/3.0a1 ID:2006091720 [cairo] for all websites listed so far.

Please reopen when you experience it with the latest trunk/branch builds and a specific web sites.

(In reply to comment #21)
> Whenever I veiw a website with a large amount of animated images, including
> java
> applications, I get a massive amount of lag. I've put together 2 pages, one
> with
> animation and one without.
> [url=http://www.metaldev.net/firefox/bugs/animation_lag/animation.html]The page
> with animation[/url] brings my CPU Usage up to 100%, yet when I veiw it with
> IE,
> there is no lag issue, and theres only 30% CPU Usage.
> [url=http://www.metaldev.net/firefox/bugs/animation_lag/no-animation.html]The
> page without animation[/url] works perfectly fine.
> 

I think that's a different bug for Java.

Likewise, there are similar bugs for background image and animated image such as bug 124150 and bug 126445 in Core.
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 18 years ago
Keywords: perf
Resolution: --- → WORKSFORME
This bug still exists in Firefox 18 and previous versions as well.

To repeat this, go to deviantart and go to any user profile and while browsing their profile gallery right click on their art work and open in new tab, continue doing this for 20 to 30 images, then go look at those tabs and use the download image option. That download option should open up a new FF window.

Usually around 30 high resolution images that are over 1000 px in any direction will cause this to happen.

It is most obvious with deviant art, but happens on flicker as well as other image boards where you view the large or original resolution images of 1000px or more.

Test system has 4gb ram.

Even when you do close out those tabs, FF never frees up the memory until it is closed down all the way.
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