Browser Freezeup March 22, 2007 6:10 PM Subscribe
New addition/change in the footer on the blue? Something's making my browser freeze up briefly when it gets to the end of the page load on MeFi threads but not on Meta or Ask [more inside]
Could it be:
a) Delay loading the FM Publishing code for ads/stats.
b) A problem in Firefox. There's a thread on MeCha about the people affected by today's Firefox update.
c) A problem in a GreaseMonkey script. This fits the "slower on long threads" point. If you use Mefi Navigator, there's a new version which is very much faster.
posted by Aloysius Bear at 6:23 PM on March 22, 2007
a) Delay loading the FM Publishing code for ads/stats.
b) A problem in Firefox. There's a thread on MeCha about the people affected by today's Firefox update.
c) A problem in a GreaseMonkey script. This fits the "slower on long threads" point. If you use Mefi Navigator, there's a new version which is very much faster.
posted by Aloysius Bear at 6:23 PM on March 22, 2007
IE (Maxthon) on XP SP2, doesn't seem to happen with Firefox at home
I'm an idiot. I misread this and got exactly the opposite meaning out of it. Admin plz hope me!
posted by Aloysius Bear at 6:35 PM on March 22, 2007
I'm an idiot. I misread this and got exactly the opposite meaning out of it. Admin plz hope me!
posted by Aloysius Bear at 6:35 PM on March 22, 2007
Well, it's a new thing (this week), so probably not a), unless Matt's changed something. I'm using IE here at work, so not b) FF and therefore not c) either.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 6:36 PM on March 22, 2007
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 6:36 PM on March 22, 2007
Oh, I was testing out that service crazyegg. They do cool stuff like this.
I'll take it out.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 6:48 PM on March 22, 2007
I'll take it out.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 6:48 PM on March 22, 2007
They do cool stuff like this.
Hmm. All I see is a vertical black bar. That's NOT COOL.
Thanks, though, for the fix, Matt.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 6:54 PM on March 22, 2007
Hmm. All I see is a vertical black bar. That's NOT COOL.
Thanks, though, for the fix, Matt.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 6:54 PM on March 22, 2007
Mathowie, maybe you should tell all the nice people what that is a picture of?
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 6:56 PM on March 22, 2007
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 6:56 PM on March 22, 2007
stavros, click on it to view full size. It's a heatmap of 10,000 mefi users clicking on the site.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 6:58 PM on March 22, 2007
posted by mathowie (staff) at 6:58 PM on March 22, 2007
How accurate is CrazyEgg? I don't quite understand how the heatmap has a huge bright 'warm' blob over the Metatalk link, when Meta only takes about 9% of Mefi traffic, according previous stats Matt has mentioned. Surely the AskMe link ought to be at least as clicked-on as Meta? Or is most of AskMe's traffic from Google, while Meta's is all internal?
posted by Aloysius Bear at 7:03 PM on March 22, 2007
posted by Aloysius Bear at 7:03 PM on March 22, 2007
That is rather cool.
It was doing the same thing to me. I figured it was the proxy server at work. I use IE there, FF here at home, and it hasn't been happening here.
Interesting how many folks seem to click on MetaTalk on that heatmap.
posted by owhydididoit at 7:07 PM on March 22, 2007
It was doing the same thing to me. I figured it was the proxy server at work. I use IE there, FF here at home, and it hasn't been happening here.
Interesting how many folks seem to click on MetaTalk on that heatmap.
posted by owhydididoit at 7:07 PM on March 22, 2007
stavros, click on it to view full size. It's a heatmap of 10,000 mefi users clicking on the site.
Agreed, that is pretty cool.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 7:09 PM on March 22, 2007
Agreed, that is pretty cool.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 7:09 PM on March 22, 2007
Heh, some of the most fun I've had in my new job was the day we installed crazy egg's heatmapping on Chowhound and spent half the afternoon clustered around the Engineers' desks going 'Ooooooooh!'
Okay, well, actually, the grass fed beef tasting evening was also pretty cool.
posted by jacquilynne at 7:13 PM on March 22, 2007
Okay, well, actually, the grass fed beef tasting evening was also pretty cool.
posted by jacquilynne at 7:13 PM on March 22, 2007
Wow. Looks like 10,000 users all click on the metatalk link. And here I though metatalk was supposed to be a backwater that only a fraction of us ever look. It gets so many clicks, it's white hot.
posted by Dave Faris at 8:28 PM on March 22, 2007
posted by Dave Faris at 8:28 PM on March 22, 2007
If you took out the heatmap code, Matt, that wasn't the problem. I'm still getting lockup.
Is nobody else experiencing this? Like I said, if it's only me, I'm quite happy to believe it's an aberration on my end.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 9:23 PM on March 22, 2007
Is nobody else experiencing this? Like I said, if it's only me, I'm quite happy to believe it's an aberration on my end.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 9:23 PM on March 22, 2007
The only other thing in the footer is the google analytics lookup.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 10:34 PM on March 22, 2007
posted by mathowie (staff) at 10:34 PM on March 22, 2007
Weird. The Analytics script is loaded for Meta pages (like this one) too, but I have no problem on this side of the site. Hmmph.
Could be some weirdo caching on the ol' corp network, maybe. Probably my end, anyway, since nobody else seems to have a problem.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 10:55 PM on March 22, 2007
Could be some weirdo caching on the ol' corp network, maybe. Probably my end, anyway, since nobody else seems to have a problem.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 10:55 PM on March 22, 2007
Would it be possible to move the FM Publishing code to the footer and use CSS or something to position the ad itself? It always massively slows down loading for me.
posted by arto at 11:38 PM on March 22, 2007
posted by arto at 11:38 PM on March 22, 2007
There's probably a load of people clicking MeTa but not AskMe because they have AskMe favourited and go straight there rather than MeFi --> AskMe.
I though metatalk was supposed to be a backwater that only a fraction of us ever look.
MeTa is where all the drama is! I read it as much as I read MeFi back when I was a lurker and signups were closed.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 5:27 AM on March 23, 2007
I though metatalk was supposed to be a backwater that only a fraction of us ever look.
MeTa is where all the drama is! I read it as much as I read MeFi back when I was a lurker and signups were closed.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 5:27 AM on March 23, 2007
How few people seem to be clicking the links within posts. Why is that not surprising...
posted by dash_slot- at 6:06 AM on March 23, 2007
posted by dash_slot- at 6:06 AM on March 23, 2007
How few people seem to be clicking the links within posts. Why is that not surprising...
If there are comments, I like to read them first. Probably a bad idea...
posted by owhydididoit at 7:24 AM on March 23, 2007
If there are comments, I like to read them first. Probably a bad idea...
posted by owhydididoit at 7:24 AM on March 23, 2007
The analysis probably isn't accounting for the probable several magnitude difference between clicks on MetaTalk/Home/Login/Search/Older posts and clicks on postings. If the home link gets 100,000 clicks a day, everyday; the 5,000 views any particular post link gets over the course of a couple days is going to be swamped unless they specifically account for the disparity. Note that the Sidebar links are being highlighted but they have the advantage of both being identified as the best and sticking around on the front page for a long time.
A couple users, The Straightener and four panels, seem to rise above the noise floor. The Straightener maybe because he's new and his featured post is phrased sort of self linky. However the older posts marker isn't actually over the older posts link so maybe The Straightener's popularity is actually indicative of the popularity of the "Capitan American getting whacked" link.
posted by Mitheral at 7:31 AM on March 23, 2007
A couple users, The Straightener and four panels, seem to rise above the noise floor. The Straightener maybe because he's new and his featured post is phrased sort of self linky. However the older posts marker isn't actually over the older posts link so maybe The Straightener's popularity is actually indicative of the popularity of the "Capitan American getting whacked" link.
posted by Mitheral at 7:31 AM on March 23, 2007
CrazyEgg, and similar services, use JavaScript to record the co-ordinates of each mouse click on a page and store this data. They then aggregate these clicks and represent them as a 'heat map' overlaying an image of the page.
The fundamental problem, and I'm not sure how (if at all) they address this, is that CrazyEgg's image of the page is not necessarily what users saw. For example, CrazyEgg itself doesn't have a user account, so the image is not the same as that shown to logged-in users.
Furthermore, CrazyEgg falls down when the page itself changes regularly, as Mefi does. The fact that The Straightener's profile link appears to be clicked on often doesn't mean that the users who clicked those particular co-ordinates were actually clicking on a link his profile. Since the page constantly scrolls, there will never be 'hotspots' over links in posts. This sort of thing makes CrazyEgg useless in situations where the page changes. Here endeth the lesson (directed at no one in particular).
posted by Aloysius Bear at 7:58 AM on March 23, 2007
The fundamental problem, and I'm not sure how (if at all) they address this, is that CrazyEgg's image of the page is not necessarily what users saw. For example, CrazyEgg itself doesn't have a user account, so the image is not the same as that shown to logged-in users.
Furthermore, CrazyEgg falls down when the page itself changes regularly, as Mefi does. The fact that The Straightener's profile link appears to be clicked on often doesn't mean that the users who clicked those particular co-ordinates were actually clicking on a link his profile. Since the page constantly scrolls, there will never be 'hotspots' over links in posts. This sort of thing makes CrazyEgg useless in situations where the page changes. Here endeth the lesson (directed at no one in particular).
posted by Aloysius Bear at 7:58 AM on March 23, 2007
stav: if you're willing, you could load up Fiddler and see exactly what's taking so long.
posted by boo_radley at 12:56 PM on March 23, 2007
posted by boo_radley at 12:56 PM on March 23, 2007
IE (Maxthon) on XP SP2, doesn't seem to happen with Firefox at home, just posting in case others are having the same issue.
I have the same issue...started a day or so ago. I have to wait to scroll the page, etc. Actually very annoying -- and only on the blue.
posted by ericb at 12:57 PM on March 23, 2007
I have the same issue...started a day or so ago. I have to wait to scroll the page, etc. Actually very annoying -- and only on the blue.
posted by ericb at 12:57 PM on March 23, 2007
I get the same thing. IE 6.0 on XP SP2.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 1:11 PM on March 23, 2007
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 1:11 PM on March 23, 2007
Aloysius Bear writes "CrazyEgg, and similar services, use JavaScript to record the co-ordinates of each mouse click on a page and store this data."
Ah, that explains the bi polar nature of the hot spot over the search box. So I guess Mefites break down into two groups: left text input clickers and middle text input clickers.
posted by Mitheral at 1:27 PM on March 23, 2007
Ah, that explains the bi polar nature of the hot spot over the search box. So I guess Mefites break down into two groups: left text input clickers and middle text input clickers.
posted by Mitheral at 1:27 PM on March 23, 2007
There's a plug in for firefox called NoScript which lets you pick and choose which scripts you let run on your browser.
posted by Dave Faris at 6:48 AM on March 24, 2007
posted by Dave Faris at 6:48 AM on March 24, 2007
OK, a little more fiddling and I've come up with this:
On Metatalk and MeFi home page and the My Comments pages (where there's no problem), the first thing is the DOCTYPE declaration.
In Metafilter threads, you're loading favorites.js and showhide.js before the DOCTYPE (something I've never seen done before).
This is the only thing I can see that might be deranging my browser.
Whaddaya think, Matt? Was there some reason for loading the .js so early on those pages only?
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 7:11 PM on March 27, 2007
On Metatalk and MeFi home page and the My Comments pages (where there's no problem), the first thing is the DOCTYPE declaration.
In Metafilter threads, you're loading favorites.js and showhide.js before the DOCTYPE (something I've never seen done before).
This is the only thing I can see that might be deranging my browser.
Whaddaya think, Matt? Was there some reason for loading the .js so early on those pages only?
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 7:11 PM on March 27, 2007
It happens to me too on the blue. It is recent, last few days.
Big pause at the end of loading a page, cannot scroll or do anything.
Goes away quickly. Causes no other issues I can tell.
posted by Ynoxas at 8:31 PM on March 27, 2007
Big pause at the end of loading a page, cannot scroll or do anything.
Goes away quickly. Causes no other issues I can tell.
posted by Ynoxas at 8:31 PM on March 27, 2007
I know it's unlikely user 1 is still reading this, but the problem described above seems to be getting more pronounced. If anything, the move to the new servers made it longer.
It is a solid 3 seconds on the front page, and about 2 seconds on comment threads.
It does not occur at all on askme, meta, or music. I've not tried jobs.
posted by Ynoxas at 7:38 AM on April 7, 2007
It is a solid 3 seconds on the front page, and about 2 seconds on comment threads.
It does not occur at all on askme, meta, or music. I've not tried jobs.
posted by Ynoxas at 7:38 AM on April 7, 2007
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IE (Maxthon) on XP SP2, doesn't seem to happen with Firefox at home, just posting in case others are having the same issue. If not, and it's only me, then disregard, of course.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 6:11 PM on March 22, 2007