MeFi is weirdly halting and slow

January 3, 2006 2:41 AM

MeFi is weirdly halting and slow whenever I load the site, or click into a thread. So, noticing my status bar, what I does is, I adds js.spellcheckthis.com to the 'Block retrieval of URL' list in my favorite local-proxy-crud-removing app, and fazowie, it's snappy again. I know some people love their spellcheckers, but if it's having the same effect on everyone, it seems like a... suboptimal solution.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken to Bugs at 2:41 AM (14 comments total)

I was having a few server issues in the last 10 or so minutes, so I hope that's when it has been happening.

I'll try to come up with a solution to this so it doesn't happen in the future.
posted by null terminated at 2:53 AM on January 3, 2006

I didn't know it was your server, null terminated. No offense.

So, in hopes that the thread isn't rendered entirely pointless: I do wonder if there's a way to do things so that web-servicey stuff like this doesn't make the client site in question (ie MeFi, in this case) slow down if there are problems at the web-service end.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 2:57 AM on January 3, 2006

The problem is that the off-site javascript is in the header of the HTML, so if it doesn't load immediately, the whole page is hung up until it times-out or responds.

One kludgy solution would be for Matt to mirror the javascript on this server, refreshing every x minutes. Then if the off-site server didn't respond, it would just hang the mirroring bit, and not the end-users.
posted by smackfu at 6:22 AM on January 3, 2006

This is why I never like linking to remote objects.

Got to be a way to load conditionally based on availability of the remote resource, without hanging up page display. I wonder if the script could be linked post-facto, after the page has been loaded. A la Greasemonkey, but not requiring a plugin.
posted by lodurr at 6:43 AM on January 3, 2006

ah, spellcheckthis is nulls server, eh? Is that why theres a referral in the download firefox link?
posted by puke & cry at 7:09 AM on January 3, 2006

ah, spellcheckthis is nulls server, eh? Is that why theres a referral in the download firefox link?

"Why is there a referral in the download firefox link?" "Because the server belongs to null."

Nope, still doesn't make sense, but "Why does this ad have a referral id" always has the same answer. That's how advertising works, see.
posted by mendel at 7:23 AM on January 3, 2006

Ah, that's why the new spell check thingy wasn't working for me, NoScript plugin for FF squashed it.
posted by Mitheral at 8:14 AM on January 3, 2006

Hmm, I take it you do need XMLRequest to actualy check the words? Why not just let people download the code and run it on their own servers? Or are you charging people?
posted by delmoi at 8:55 AM on January 3, 2006

I don't understand the Firefox ad, it says download Firefox, when I click it, there's no link present to download Firefox. It just says to put the "Get Firefox" banner.
posted by riffola at 10:04 AM on January 3, 2006

riffola: funny, I was thinking about the bad design of that page this morning... it's not very clear, but you're supposed to click the square image.
posted by Firas at 2:33 PM on January 3, 2006

Got to be a way to load conditionally based on availability of the remote resource, without hanging up page display.

My team actually did this, back in the paleolithic (1999) when I was a product manager, for a webapp were building. For the life of me, I can't remember how, and if it depended on any particular technologies, though.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 3:02 PM on January 3, 2006

You can put my uglier and buggier version on any server you want if that's the issue. Also I don't care if no one ever gets Firefox again.
posted by moift at 10:32 PM on January 3, 2006

Actually it's probably done the way it is now because security settings won't allow XMLRequests to domains that didn't orginally serve the Javascript, but a better way around that would alleviate the dependency would be to have a local page that acts as a gobetween with the PHP server, then the (somewhat bulky) script can be served locally.

Also in the meantime maybe run the script through one the obfuscater/compressor things that makes all the functions one letter and saves an appreciable amount of bandwidth.
posted by moift at 10:40 PM on January 3, 2006

I had to block the spellcheckthis server as well. It was fucking up my metatalk. Now it's all snappy again.
posted by The Monkey at 7:06 PM on January 5, 2006