Anyone having browser performance issues with Android Central?

[teesquared42]

Personally, I use IE (yeah I know bad choice) but I also tried Chrome. This site, especially the forum sections, seems to have a lot of slowdowns with both browsers. I get javascript warning messages and even an occasional crash. Are other folks also having this issue? Is there a fix? I tried to use an "ad blocker" in hopes that it was ad related with no luck. Any help is appreciated.

 

[SpookDroid]

I had that issue when some ads were using Flash to display. Would slow down my scrolling to a crawl. But AdBlocker helped and now I have no issues. But yeah, the culprit was Flash.

 

[teesquared42]

Thanks SpookDroid. Per your suggestions I enabled AdBlockPlus (it works with IE) and disabled the Flash plugin. Things do feel a lot snappier now. I still see a few ads which is fine. I just didn't want the slowdown. It's not 100% fixed (I think because some pages are just huge) but it is definitely an improvement.

 

[neonworm]

I don't know how the situation is on a desktop or laptop, but it is definitely buggy and laggy on mobile devices. On every tablet and phone I tried it on it lags.

 

[teesquared42]

My situation was desktop but I could see how it would be more of a problem on mobile if they don't have a custom mobile version of the site. If I could offer a suggestion to AC, I'd say replace the scripted ads with static images. Also, maybe make a pass on some of the pages to see which ones have loading issues and try to split them up (reduce number of posts or users displayed, etc.). Some of the lag to me feels like it's coming from the browser waiting to load everything. So when the site is under heavy load (lots of users online) you feel it even more. If there were a way to have those loads happen in the background and not block the page from being interactive, that would make a big improvement too.

 

[SpookDroid]

What browser are you using? I'm seeing no issue on my devices using Chrome or the stock Samsung browser (Note 4, Tab S)

 

[raptir]

I've been having a lot of trouble with the site using Firefox. The browser would freeze frequently. I thought it was an issue with my FF install and kept reinstalling, created a new profile, etc... and found that it only happens on Android Central. I switched to using Chrome for AC and it's running better but I'm still seeing 250MB+ per AC tab which seems excessive.

Edit: This is on the desktop, also.

 

[anon8380037]

I use IE 11 and I hate waiting to scroll.
I put it down to a data heavy site, but it's bugging me more recently. I don't get any advertising except for AC items.

I should try knocking the Adobe plug in then?
Well I'll give it a shot.

(Don't like Firefox but I have to use it only for 2 sites that won't log in with IE.)

 

[teesquared42]

So with IE, I initially turned off Flash but I need it on for some games I like to play. I think what helped me the most was running AdBlockPlus. That eliminated a lot of the ads that were hurting load times and stopping page scrolling.

 

[Rukbat]

1) Kill as many links to ads as you can (using the hosts file).

2) IE has about the slowest Javascript interpreter of any browser in the world - still. (Version 5 was so slow that displaying a database grid on one of my sites, that took about 20 seconds in Firefox [there's no way to get speed when you're dealing with 25 million records], took so long in IE that as an experiment, I connected a computer running IE 5 to the site at 9AM [via gigabit Ethernet, so it wasn't a connection issue] and shut the computer down when I left at 5PM - and still had no display. Since I write the entire site, I can say with certainty that it was the speed of the ECMAscript [Microsoft calls it by its correct name] interpreter in IE that was the problem.)

(I'm running Flash, and while I don't get the "snap" I'd get from a 1kb text page running locally [faster than 1 screen frame takes to paint], I don't usually see more than about 1 second delay. There are occasional hangs, but whether they're due to the site backing itself up or a traffic jam on the internet path, I can't say. [Where "occasional" means about twice a week - and I'm here 6-8 hours a day.])