508937 - In the Library right pane, just moving from one bookmark to another with the Up/Dn keys is slow

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: Bookmarks & History, defect)

Description

[Rick]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.1) Gecko/20090715 Firefox/3.5.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.1) Gecko/20090715 Firefox/3.5.1

I have about 1300 bookmarks (2.8mb places.sqlite file) on FF3.5.1, though this problem started with FF3.0.  I am running Windows XP-SP3 on a 2.4ghz Celeron with 1gb memory.  I am running Sysinternal's Process Explorer in the background so I can easily see the CPU usage.

Each single press of the Up or Down cursor key to move through a list of bookmarks causes the CPU% to spike from 50-100%.  Multiple presses in a row cause a more prolonged 100% spike and a noticeable delay in selection and filling in the Details pane.

On a related note, holding down the Up or Down key so that the key repeats should quickly scan through a list, selecting bookmarks pretty much at the key repeat speed, until the user releases the button.  Instead, it goes slower than it should, awkwardly stopping and starting again while intermittently filling in the Details pane for some intermediate bookmarks, with the CPU maxed out. Scrolling off the screen makes it even slower.  From my (limited) understanding, for key repeat, the onselect() handler should "rapidly scroll through the items, the event handler ... not called until the user stops ... (for a) performance improvement (MDC)," but it seems like there is a lot of processing going on for each intermediate item before the key is released, if not by the onselect() handler then by something else.

The main problem here is that UI responsiveness is awkward and jerky, when I would think it should be almost instant considering what it is doing, filling in the Details pane or not even that when the key is repeating.  The problem also seems proportional to the total number of bookmarks I have.

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

can you reproduce in safe mode? http://support.mozilla.com/kb/Safe+Mode

Comment 2

[Rick]

Just tried it in safe mode again to be sure, yes it's still there.  I also tried it in a new profile and added 50 or so bookmarks.  It seemed only somewhat faster.  I'm willing to try any other case you suggest.

Comment 3

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

Bug 451915 - move Firefox/Places bugs to Firefox/Bookmarks and History. Remove all bugspam from this move by filtering for the string "places-to-b-and-h".

In Thunderbird 3.0b, you do that as follows:
Tools | Message Filters
Make sure the correct account is selected. Click "New"
Conditions: Body   contains   places-to-b-and-h
Change the action to "Delete Message".
Select "Manually Run" from the dropdown at the top.
Click OK.

Select the filter in the list, make sure "Inbox" is selected at the bottom, and click "Run Now". This should delete all the bugspam. You can then delete the filter.

Gerv

Comment 4

[Rick]

Just retested this on the same system using firefox-4.0b8pre.en-US.win32.zip (dated 11/14/10) and it works now. Performance is snappy while moving from bm to bm on the same screen with no big bump in cpu%. Expectedly slows down when it starts to scroll bms off the screen, but still reasonably fast.