562676 - Animated GIFs intermittently result in choppy scrolling

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 551350

(Core :: Graphics, defect)

Description

[Gary [:streetwolf52]]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.3a5pre) Gecko/20100429 Minefield/3.7a5pre Firefox/3.6
Build Identifier: 20100429041232

On a pretty regular basis scrolling will go from smooth to choppy. This usually can be fixed by doing a number of mundane things like minimizing/maximizing, opening up a menu, the list goes on.  Of course a restart of MF solves it to.  

After trying to find a cause I came upon the possible culprit, animated GIFs. To test this theory out I set the Prefs 'image.animation_mode' to none.  I've been running for a few hours and no scrolling problems.  I should have gotten quite a few over this period.

I am running with d2d/dw enabled as well as OOPP enabled.  Don't know if there is a correlation with d2d/dw but their might be.  Another user reported he gets choppy scrolling with d2d/dw disabled

Reproducible: Sometimes

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Go to sites with animated GIFs.   Make sure the Pref is set to normal
2. Keep on surfing.
3.
Actual Results:  
While the site with the Animated GIF might scroll OK, somewhere down the line scrolling will become choppy.  So don't expect a site with animated GIFs too immediately cause choppy scrolling.

Expected Results:  
Animated GIFs should not cause scrolling problems.

Because of the nature of this 'bug' you might not see the issue for a little while.

Comment 1

[Gary [:streetwolf52]]

This has been happening for quite a while.  I vaguely recall it appeared around the time d2d/dw was introduced but I could be mistaken.

Comment 2

[jacob]

I have a new PC w/windows7-64 and I am experiencing same problem as mr streetwolf does.
On Yahoo news website the page moves page-up without me touching the scroll buttom.
Some more links where scrolling hangs; http://www.zdf.de/,http://www.bild.de/

Comment 3

[Gary [:streetwolf52]]

(In reply to comment #2)
> I have a new PC w/windows7-64 and I am experiencing same problem as mr
> streetwolf does.
> On Yahoo news website the page moves page-up without me touching the scroll
> buttom.
> Some more links where scrolling hangs; http://www.zdf.de/,http://www.bild.de/

Unless setting the Pref I mentioned to none fixes your problem then it appears your problem might be different. I haven't had a scrolling issue for about 6 hours now.

Comment 4

[jacob]

The issue with scrolling on my 64 bit PC is more severe on websites having animated ad's those that add-on flashblock has no control on. I have done some testing like > disabling add-on "flashblock">start and run minefield. Disabling add-on "smooth wheel">options>advanced>use smooth scrolling>start and run minefield, in both test Prefs default "normal". In both test I get same results when changing Prefs to "none" (image.animation_mode) I have also dump the file "extensions.sqlite" and restart the browser and after this action minefield is doing better with my add-ons enabled and image.animation_mode set to normal but scrolling still ain't smooth as on my 32 bit machine.

Comment 5

[Jim Jeffery not reading bug-mail 1/2/11]

Well, after two days with the pref set to 'none', I'm still getting stutters scrolling, even using flash-block so no junk ads are running.

I still think its cyclecollection or garbagecollection going on but don't know how to test or check when it fires if it could be correlated to the stutter.

Comment 6

[Gary [:streetwolf52]]

I haven't had any scrolling issues since turning off animated gifs.

Comment 7

[jacob]

I am still getting websites (yahoo news-tech) where scollling doesn't go smooth.
It seems to be w7 only issue because my Linux 86_64 runs OK.

Comment 8

[Gary [:streetwolf52]]

Next time when scrolling becomes choppy bring up TaskManger then exit it and see if scrolling improves.

Comment 9

[Gary [:streetwolf52]]

Turned on animations and very quickly I encountered choppy scrolling.  Left it that way for a few hours and the choppiness comes and go.  Turned it off and no scrolling problems.

I am wondering if turning on animation is the culprit and not hitting a site with animated Gifs.

Comment 10

[jacob]

I have tried them all enabled/disabled one at the time; html5, jit, mozilla.widget.render-mode, gfx.font_rendering.directwrite.enabled and image.animation_mode. This link : https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bugs   scrolling is difficult the page moves up/down like a wave and text do dim too. Scrolling with minefield build 20100503 is now less severe than builds of a few days ago.

Comment 11

[Gary [:streetwolf52]]

Happens here too.  I'm going to open up a bug report on it.