[meta87]

I am loving my first mac I got about a week ago. It is a 17 in powerbook 1.5 ghz with a gig of ram. It is running tiger. Everything is great except for browsing the internet. I not quite sure what to expect but this is a pretty high end system and I would think it would be pretty quick about simple browsing, but I'm having major slow downs.

Specifically, scrolling is laggy, entering text also and it doesn't seem very responsive. I have tried safari, camino, and firefox and all seem to have the same problem. They all start out alright but after a while of using them they get bogged down and start using close to 100% cpu cycles.

I may just be a little spoiled since I'm used to a pretty fast Athlon 3000 64 bit on windows. Should I expect a little delay when clicking on a form box and typing How about scrolling? Thanks!

This is the only thing keeping me from pure bliss with this wonderful machine.

[Chuckit]

I've got a 15" and it doesn't feel that slow to me. Is this Safari 2.0? Older versions of Safari were kind of sluggish (and I actually switched to Firefox for a while), but Safari 2 has been zippy enough that I use it full-time.

[meta87]

Thanks for the reply.

Yes it is with Safari 2.0. Also the other browsers I mentioned.

After doing some further research, it seems like animated gifs and flash may be what is bringing the computer to its knees. I'm going to see about blocking them with plugins.

Any further suggestions are appreciated!

[Chuckit]

Very strange. I haven't had that problem since Tiger came out. You might try Camino or Firefox if Safari isn't what you're looking for.

[CaptainHaddock]

Safari on my iMac G4 is very responsive and scrolls very fast. I would suggest getting Apple to look at it and fix it if that's possible. Remember: one of the nice things about Macs is that Apple will fix any software or hardware problems you have.

Now, if you're only having this trouble on Flash-heavy pages, it's probably because of the Flash plug-in (Macromedia's Mac plug-in is known to be quite slow).

[Chinasaur]

Lots of threads in the past on optimizing browsing in OS X.

An easy one to ensure Safari stays fast -

In your user account, go to /Library/Safari/Icons and set the Icons folder to Read-Only. This prevents Safari from caching site icons which slow it down over time.

[newpwrbook15]

...when I view certain web pages with Safari and Camino. For instance (http://www.bwspeakers.com/index.cfm/...7F00D0B7473B37) is a B&W stereo speaker site. When I go to this page, and start scrolling up and down, Safari starts to hog all the CPU power, maxing it out (viewed using Activity Monitor). Once 100% usage is reached, it stays pegged until I close the window (or tab). Same result with Camino. Firefox will increase the usage, but not to 100%. And if I stop scrolling, the CPU usage drops to normal levels...ie. I don't have to close the window to cool the CPU down. Anyone have ANY idea why this might be?

I've got an Al powebook G4/1.5G CPU/1.5G RAM/Combo

[newpwrbook15]

Originally Posted by newpwrbook15

...when I view certain web pages with Safari and Camino. For instance (http://www.bwspeakers.com/index.cfm/...7F00D0B7473B37) is a B&W stereo speaker site. When I go to this page, and start scrolling up and down, Safari starts to hog all the CPU power, maxing it out (viewed using Activity Monitor). Once 100% usage is reached, it stays pegged until I close the window (or tab). Same result with Camino. Firefox will increase the usage, but not to 100%. And if I stop scrolling, the CPU usage drops to normal levels...ie. I don't have to close the window to cool the CPU down. Anyone have ANY idea why this might be?

I've got an Al powebook G4/1.5G CPU/1.5G RAM/Combo

The post should begin "The most interesting thing happens...when I view...."

Sorry

[CaptainHaddock]

The Flash 7 plug-in from Macromedia is notoriously poor, but if you install the new Flash 8 plug-in from Macromedia's website, you might better performance on Flash-intensive pages.

[CharlesS]

Have you tried Shiira? Historically, anyway, it's been a lot faster than Safari in the interface department, whereas it has the exact same rendering engine.

Just make sure you get the latest nightly, as the stable build has really ugly icons.

[Thinine]

Have you updated to 10.4.3? Should be a bit of a speedup for you. But I tried the site you linked to and it seemed to work alright, and I'm only on an iBook 500.

[King Bob On The Cob]

It's flash. Flash is terrible on the Macs, If you noticed your processor is getting pegged all of the sudden check on the page for a flash ad.
1) get Flash 8 player.
2) Block ads on sites that use flash ads.

[Randman]

Empty your cache frequently and delete unread RSS feeds (and reduce the number if at possible). Also, if you have Autofill, Safari can bog down some. Edit down the Autofill > Others to a manageable number.

And if you're watching videos, quit Safari now and then cuz Quicktime can cause a memory leak and WMV plugins are buggy with Safari.

[newpwrbook15]

Originally Posted by Thinine

Have you updated to 10.4.3? Should be a bit of a speedup for you. But I tried the site you linked to and it seemed to work alright, and I'm only on an iBook 500.

Yeah- So I'm running OS X 10.3. I upgraded to flash 8, emptied cache, turned off RSS, turned off autofill, did all that stuff. Still same problem. And Firefox still performs better than Safari. I mean sure, the processor shows some increased usage, especially with scrolling, but it immediately returns to normal when I stop. I already uninstalled Camino, so no idea how that would respond to the new fixes.

Funny- when replying to this thread I noticed all the smilies. So I started scrolling really fast. And the processor immediately pegged, but when I stopped scrolling, the processor fell back to normal usage. On that B&W site, once that processor gets pegged, it stays pegged until I close the browser window or tab.

Does that help anyone with the diagnosis? Should I unistall and re-install Safari with the startup disk?

[Fonzie]

First off, there should be no reason to even begin installing any Flash player with OS X. whether it be 10.3 or 10.4. The builtin Flash player works just fine. Atleast for me. But then again I never go to any Flash intensive sites because the cpu goes bump in the night with 100% cpu. I won't even bother installing Flash 8.0. I have no actual solution to any of these issues other than stay the hell away from those bastardly sites that does not go with the times. Flash is so L.A. and a thing of the 90's.

[GENERAL_SMILEY]

Originally Posted by Fonzie

First off, there should be no reason to even begin installing any Flash player with OS X. whether it be 10.3 or 10.4. The builtin Flash player works just fine. Atleast for me. But then again I never go to any Flash intensive sites because the cpu goes bump in the night with 100% cpu. I won't even bother installing Flash 8.0. I have no actual solution to any of these issues other than stay the hell away from those bastardly sites that does not go with the times. Flash is so L.A. and a thing of the 90's.

Unfortunately you know absolutely nothing about what you're talking about; the built in Flash player is simply whatever version of Flash player that shipped with your computer - updating it is the equivalent to updating any piece of software on your computer - namely a good idea.

Flash 8 is an improvement over 7, much like Safari 2.0.2 is an improvement over 2.0.

Flash is somewhat slower on a Mac, than a PC - but it alone should not cause that much trouble on well specced machine.

Block Ads with Pithhelmet http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/10752.

[Fonzie]

^I said there should be no reason for installing a Flash player at all. The thing you mention about updating to a newer version is not always the best case scenario. Look at the recent posts about Stuffit Expander 10 crashing on 10.4.3. I use Stuffit Expander 9 and the same OS X version number and I have no problems. Go ahead and do what YOU normally do but that doesn't mean that that applies to all people. I think I normally have a good idea of what i'm talking about. Or maybe not. In any case do whatever you feel is good for you.

[ghporter]

Are you sure it's your browser that's slowing down and not your Internet connection itself? Have you run some speed tests to see what kind of bandwidth you're getting?

[OAW]

You may want to check your Appearance system preference and see if you have Use smooth scrolling enabled. I personally don't use this because I find that it makes scrolling unresponsive. If it is checked on your machine you may want to uncheck and restart your browser to see if it helps.

OAW

[Person Man]

Originally Posted by Fonzie

^I said there should be no reason for installing a Flash player at all. The thing you mention about updating to a newer version is not always the best case scenario. Look at the recent posts about Stuffit Expander 10 crashing on 10.4.3. I use Stuffit Expander 9 and the same OS X version number and I have no problems. Go ahead and do what YOU normally do but that doesn't mean that that applies to all people. I think I normally have a good idea of what i'm talking about. Or maybe not. In any case do whatever you feel is good for you.

Um, OS X ships with Flash Player 7 from Macromedia already. Flash Player 7 is buggy and slow (on Macs), and has some major security flaws that have been fixed with Flash Player 8. Flash Player 8 on Macs is also about as fast as it is on PCs.

All of those are reasons to update the Flash Player.

If you don't need the extra features of Stuffit 10, good for you. Allume has already released version 10.0.1 which fixes the crashes.

[Thinine]

Originally Posted by OAW

You may want to check your Appearance system preference and see if you have Use smooth scrolling enabled. I personally don't use this because I find that it makes scrolling unresponsive. If it is checked on your machine you may want to uncheck and restart your browser to see if it helps.

OAW

This is almost 100% likely to be your problem. Can't believe I didn't think of it, as it can really affect perceived scroll speed, especially when you don't know it's on.

[newpwrbook15]

I turned smooth scrolling off. Didn't really notice a difference. Actually, no difference at all. Besides, even without the scrolling, the processor stills pegs. It just takes about 30seconds longer. Scrolling on the page just accelerates the pegging. Can't be the internet connection, b/c the page is completely loaded when this occurs. I stopped by the Apple store, and one of their powerbooks with a 1.67G processor behaved the same way. I guess it's the mac, or safari. Either way, it's too bad such a powerful processor gets pegged by a webpage when running no other processor intensive apps...

[Nai no Kami]

I can confirm the same problem you are experiencing with the B&W page. After scrolling it on purpose a number of times, the processor usage of Safari increases substantially as I keep scrolling, reaching >90%. The problem is that, unlike this page, when I stop scrolling the processor usage doesn't decrease. The only way to restore it back to normal is to close the page (either the tab or the window if there was no tab). Problem arises with both smooth scrolling on and off.
This occurs on a PB 12" 1.5 GHz, Mac OS X 10.4.3, Safari 2.0.2, Flash 8.0 r22.
Could Console give us a hint?.
Could you give me another pages where do you experience this problem?

[mania]

I have a reason for the poor performance on the bw page, look at the source code - worst code I have seen in a LONG time - absolutely horrible - not suprising since they are cold fusion developers.

for kicks i put the page in the validator.w3.org and it found 2124 errors - TWO THOUSAND! w3 has been churning away on the errors for over a minute.

I hearby claim it is not Safaris fault nor Flash nor your mac but the dumbass developers for writing such horrible code. Anyone have a pc they can check that page out on? I bet it gives IE fits as well.

[Thinine]

Holy crap you're right, it does take 100% of the CPU. I'll try to narrow it down and file a bug.

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by mania

I hearby claim it is not Safaris fault nor Flash nor your mac but the dumbass developers for writing such horrible code. Anyone have a pc they can check that page out on? I bet it gives IE fits as well.

I tried it on IE on a Windows machine in the library, and I didn't check the CPU usage, but scrolling was really jerky. FWIW...

[Love Calm Quiet]

Solution: Clue the company in about the lame web designers that gave them such ~cool~ web effects.
They need the feedback!

[Nai no Kami]

In is surely possible that a horrid-coded page may be the culprit. What intrigues me is that the processor usage increases with scrolling and not with just having the page loaded. And when scrolling has ceased, it doesn't go back to normal values but keeps to the max.

[Love Calm Quiet]

FWIW (although I haven't studied the code on that page) here's what I find most quirky about how that page uses CPU:
Upon first opening the page: nothing. No CPU hog.
Once I start scrolling: no huge increase.
Once I *stop* scrolling: 100% CPU. But...
When I start scrolling again: CPU becomes minimal again... (until I *stop* scrolling).
Further: Even if I bring another tab to the front, the 100% hogging resumes... until I actually CLOSE the offending tab.
(My being too lazy to evaluate the code) I'm wondering if anyone has idea what in code might so bless a page?

[newpwrbook15]

Tried the page using my old compaq presario with a Pentium III 700MHz processor. I visited the site with IE and Firefox. Page loads fine, processor not pegged, scrolling is smooth and fast. Even when I scroll as fast as I can, the processor doesn't peg. Strange behavior out of Safari, and I'm intrigued that so many minds have taken an interest in this problem...didn't realize that I would provoke so much dialogue. And I feel bad for the guy who started the post. It seems my question has overtaken the thread...

[DeathMan]

We like to think we have found heaven on earth. We're trying desperately to prove it.

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by newpwrbook15

Tried the page using my old compaq presario with a Pentium III 700MHz processor. I visited the site with IE and Firefox. Page loads fine, processor not pegged, scrolling is smooth and fast. Even when I scroll as fast as I can, the processor doesn't peg. Strange behavior out of Safari, and I'm intrigued that so many minds have taken an interest in this problem...didn't realize that I would provoke so much dialogue. And I feel bad for the guy who started the post. It seems my question has overtaken the thread...

Weird, I wonder why the scrolling was jerky with IE on the machines I used at the library (of which I don't know the speeds, but they seemed much more recent than a 700 MHz PIII).

[newpwrbook15]

That's Compaq performance for ya! Grrrr! It's a beast to be reckoned with...

[wtmcgee]

Originally Posted by Fonzie

^I said there should be no reason for installing a Flash player at all. The thing you mention about updating to a newer version is not always the best case scenario. Look at the recent posts about Stuffit Expander 10 crashing on 10.4.3. I use Stuffit Expander 9 and the same OS X version number and I have no problems. Go ahead and do what YOU normally do but that doesn't mean that that applies to all people. I think I normally have a good idea of what i'm talking about. Or maybe not. In any case do whatever you feel is good for you.

Yea, we should all run lynx to view the web...

[Fonzie]

Originally Posted by wtmcgee

Yea, we should all run lynx to view the web...

Why not. If that works for you. I don't think I said that we should use Lynx to view the web. I just said that there isn't always a need to upgrade. We should get rid of the Flash based websites because they suck bandwidth and everybody hates the adverts on websites that are made in Flash. For instance. Just my view of things. I have updated to the latest Flash and Stuffit though. Just because I felt like it and ****. Isn't the best thing to view a website if there's actual information on the site instead of crappy Flash graphics that makes fans spin(mine for instance).. I don't know really. Flame me.

I think I just had a revelation OMG. I hate Flash because they make my fans in my rev.a iMac G5 spin like there's no tomorrow ... no need to discuss this any further.

[Big Mac]

Originally Posted by CaptainHaddock

The Flash 7 plug-in from Macromedia is notoriously poor, but if you install the new Flash 8 plug-in from Macromedia's website, you might better performance on Flash-intensive pages.

Flash 7 may be comparatively slow, but at least it does not break compatibility with many Flash pages in the way that version 8 does. And I have no problem viewing that site the OP refers to. Of course, I'm a G5, but it shouldn't be that taxing to other Macs.

[mania]

I still say its the code - doesn't matter if it works okay in some browsers - its poor code that doesn't even come anywhere close to following standards. so some browsers workaround it better than others - thats not the point. a baby bunny dies each time someone uses dreamweaver to make a website - do you want that on your head - DO YOU?

[Thinine]

Okay, I reduced this last night and one of the WebKit team filed it for me once they figured out what was going on.

http://bugzilla.opendarwin.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5751

Whoever designed that site needs to die. It took me two hours to reduce the thing through they nasty code. **** them.

[mania]

oh that is so insane - bw coders causing a DOS attack on their own customers with their poorly code.

[gopikrishna]

Originally Posted by mania

oh that is so insane - bw coders causing a DOS attack on their own customers with their poorly code.

(courtesy of their web designer-strategists!)

[yukon]

In general, Mac browsers aren't great. Mac users tend not to see that unless they're on a slow system or don't use Windows at all. Or maybe they do, and that's why there's so many tips. They all have their stregnths and downfalls, you usually get that "choose any two of the three qualities", speed features and standards-compliance.

Try iCab at icab.de, it's an old browser, so it's lacking in multithreading and some say the appearance, but it's fast and standards compliant as of v.3b. The filtermanager is great for turning off javascript, CSS, banners, etc except in the sites that need them, and that decreases CPU usage a lot.

Check out Privoxy.org, it can remove the banners and such that slow browsers down, without adding extensions or memory-patching. It does have to buffer the entire page first depending on the options you use, so if it's slow turn off all the "Filter" and "deanimate gifs" options and leave the "block" ones enabled.

Firefox has Flashblock extension, which is very handy. Adblock is nice but not very powerful. In about:config you can search "anim" and set that gif one to "once" instead of "normal". Pithhelmet is for safari, but I hated it, it slowed Safari down terribly for me and was doing memory-patching, so I avoided it, but if you like Safari I'm sure it's invaluable. Camino has the CamiOptions plugin that doesn't appear to do any memory patching...Camino tends to be the fastest Mac browser in my opinion, and with Privoxy it's pretty feature-complete.

Flash is a culprit. I've seen my processor usage stay high, only to find a flash ad was playing in my backgrounded browser. Flash 8 may solve it, I generally turn off flash since it's been abused constantly (like Javascript).

I'm afraid you won't duplicate the speed of Firefox on Windows, it's faster than any browser I've tried on the MacOS and faster than even Firefox on Linux.

[ryaxnb]

Originally Posted by newpwrbook15

Yeah- So I'm running OS X 10.3. I upgraded to flash 8, emptied cache, turned off RSS, turned off autofill, did all that stuff. Still same problem. And Firefox still performs better than Safari. I mean sure, the processor shows some increased usage, especially with scrolling, but it immediately returns to normal when I stop. I already uninstalled Camino, so no idea how that would respond to the new fixes.

Funny- when replying to this thread I noticed all the smilies. So I started scrolling really fast. And the processor immediately pegged, but when I stopped scrolling, the processor fell back to normal usage. On that B&W site, once that processor gets pegged, it stays pegged until I close the browser window or tab.

Does that help anyone with the diagnosis? Should I unistall and re-install Safari with the startup disk?

Maybe. My system doesn't experience any of the symptoms you are describing (Mac Mini, 1.25 Ghz, 1GB RAM.