Android Central Site Performance

[jeffreytz]

I'm not sure what's going on but the AC site for me has been getting progressively worse from a performance standpoint and now it's become almost unusable for the way I like to browse sites like this.

I'm a Windows 10/Chrome browser (currently build 54.0.2840.99 m) user (but I see similar performance issues using Edge). If I launch AC in a tab, the site is slow, sluggish to scroll but usable. I like to scan through the articles and Ctrl-click the ones I'm interested in to open them up in new windows, then when I've scrolled through all the new articles I work my way through each of the tabs I opened. I do this with lots of other sites (Engadget, The Verge, news sites, etc.) and it works perfectly fine.

But with AC lately after I've opened up a 3rd tab my browser becomes almost completely unresponsive. The tabs are just spinning trying to load up the pages (often I'll go to them and they're just blank, and if I try to refresh them they just sit there). The ones that do have the page displayed are nearly impossible to scroll through and unresponsive.

Just opening up the AC page in Chrome I see my CPU go from 3% to almost 70% as it tries to load the page. If I watch the CPU meter as I scroll through the site CPU usage jumps from 20% to 50%. Opening up three articles in separate tabs causes the CPU to jump to at least 50%. I see similar CPU usage if I open up new tabs via Engadget, for example, however its short-lived and the pages load correctly and remain responsive (scrolling, clicking links, etc.). With AC the pages load some times but as long as I have 3 or more AC tabs open all of the AC pages are practically unusable.

So I'm curious if this is just something I'm experiencing or if anyone else is. I see this on my Core i5 Surface Pro 4 with 8GB RAM and my Core i7 desktop with 12 GB RAM. I don't have this user experience with any other sites, so it seems to me to be something with the AC page design. I've turned my ad blocker off for the AC site (as I do for most that I regularly visit); I turned it back on to see if ads loading was part of the issue and it doesn't seem to be (yes it takes longer for the initial AC window to load with ads allowed but I get the same performance issues with ads on or off if I open up 3 or more tabs).

 

[thatguy97]

Yes it's bad and they are aware of it but just use the AC app (the non Tapatalk one) no ads and works great.

 

[Aquila]

The last few days there have been some extra issues - admins have it in radar

 

[Marcus Adolfsson]

Jeff thanks for the report, we are looking into this actively. I am not seeing the same issue on Safari/macOS, but trying our best to reproduce.

 

[Laura Knotek]

Jeff thanks for the report, we are looking into this actively. I am not seeing the same issue on Safari/macOS, but trying our best to reproduce.

More people probably use Windows and Chrome, rather than Mac and Safari.

 

[skoenig]

Hi jeffreytz thanks for the report, pretty horrible performance you're seeing there. I tried on mine and I get about 5% usage on 5 mixed ac tabs (still too much I know).

Can you try access the site incognito? I'll like to try to eliminate any poorly behaved retargetting...

Regards

Steph

 

[anon(5719825)]

I tried this site a few days ago in Safari with my adblocker turned off and like the OP, the tab took over two minutes to load and still never fully loaded. I gave up and turned on my adblocker again and the page loaded instantly. It's likely the ads or the code used on the pages to load those ads.

 

[Laura Knotek]

How fast does androidcentral.com load?

Slow (2.957 Seconds), 78% of sites are faster.
Androidcentral.com Traffic, Demographics and Competitors - Alexa

 

[anon(5719825)]

Also, times are now ahead by about 6 hrs.

 

[jeffreytz]

Can you try access the site incognito? I'll like to try to eliminate any poorly behaved retargetting...

Hi Steph, I tried it in incognito and had the same results. Thanks.

 

[LeoRex]

The site is all but unusable on my end without ad blockers installed. To give you an idea as to how heavy the ad content makes the site, with Ad Block AND Ublock both running, the tab sits with about 70MB of memory. Within seconds of whitelisting AC and refreshing the page, the amount of RAM consumed by the AC tab jumps to a little over 800MB... it was also probably close to a minute before I was able to access the forums without significant lag while ads were still being rendered.

 

[racedog]

I use the app but for long responses I use the website because it is too hard to use the app for long typing. I've pretty much given up trying to give longer responses or even responding on threads at all because using the site from my desktop browser has become impossible. I had just written a long review a few minutes ago but gave up when the site locked up and I just gave up. Its too bad I used to be more active here but no longer even try.

 

[anon(5719825)]

They must be working on the site because trying to post a reply using the website is a mess right now.

 

[Aquila]

Yes it seems like something somehow broke, so hopefully we'll hear of fixes soon.

 

[hallux]

Things seem to have gone downhill recently. I admit to using an adblocker but recently in order to get full formatting capability on quick replies or to be able to like a post I have had to disable the adblocker on this site. I am also unable to hover on the "x new" link to drop-down the notifications (quoted, liked, PM, etc), with or without the adblocker enabled.

Load times on Chrome on a Mac are HORRIBLE. I can't tell you how many times I thought the page was done, went to click on a post and ended up clicking on something else as the page bumped down due to an ad loading.

Also, I was just reading a 14-post thread and several times the browser stopped scrolling and I had to wait.

 

[Javier P]

I am also unable to hover on the "x new" link to drop-down the notifications (quoted, liked, PM, etc), with or without the adblocker enabled.

There's a workaround for this. Hover on the "x new" and click on the down arrow key once or twice, so the pointer is inside the dropdown menu. Then you'll be able to click on the links. Yeah, I know, not a fix

 

[anon(5719825)]

Things seem to have gone downhill recently. I admit to using an adblocker but recently in order to get full formatting capability on quick replies or to be able to like a post I have had to disable the adblocker on this site. I am also unable to hover on the "x new" link to drop-down the notifications (quoted, liked, PM, etc), with or without the adblocker enabled.



Also, I was just reading a 14-post thread and several times the browser stopped scrolling and I had to wait.

Wow. After reading this, I disabled my Adblocker for a minute and reloaded a page. The full formatting on replies came back. I quickly turned on my Adblocker again. I refuse to visit this site without an Adblocker. I don't have the patience to wait two minutes for a page to load and there are several ads spots where I get page couldn't load instead of the ad. That's likely why my browser takes minutes to load.

 

[Aquila]

Brought this up again with admins, so far there haven't been any solutions. I'm basically stuck using the app and just as interested as you all in a solution to all this. Thanks for your patience!

 

[Aquila]

And I'm wrong already - there is something that seems to be working and we should be able to detail soon.

 

[11B1P]

I just noticed this site runs fine in IE, but adblocker is also enabled. I had been having a terrible time with this site and the WC site using Edge. I think it's the video ads causing the slow performance.