ASP.NET Forums Really Suck in FireFox

37 Comments

• I've found the forums noticeably slower in Firefox than in IE since the upgrade. Not end-of-world slower, but ya :)
  

• Is this more a grip with the asp.net's speed itself or the community server code itself?
  
  
  
  like if you goto CS's forums, are they just as slow/buggy?
  

• I shot an email to telligent telling them they need to hire a developer with a good knowlege of web standards so they can avoid problems just like what you're referring to but I never heard back (not surprising though). There's really no excuse for this kind of thing anymore, it's not 1980.
  

• Nope - works just fine for me. Pretty responsive. Next button works just fine.
  
  
  
  Most strange.
  
  

• I just visited the forums in Firefox, and they loaded fine for me..just as fast as I'm used to. I clicked a few links and still seems fairly fast for me. I do, however, see that you have to click the next link twice in Firefox, but not in IE.
  

• Paul,
  
  
  
  I use FF a lot too, but don't seem to have that problem. Do you have any plug-ins installed for FF? We've have seen some issues with FF with plug-ins, but through we had fixed all of those.
  
  
  
  Please let me know: rhoward@telligent.com
  

• I just gave it a quick visit in fire fox and did not have any problems with load time and the next page link appears to be working fine. I would say that it was the same experience as when I was in IE.
  
  
  
  Checked the about dialog on FF, and here is what they list for version info. Plus I have no additional add ins installed.
  
  
  
  Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20050915 Firefox/1.0.7
  

• There is also an IE tab extension to open up tabs using the IE render engine.
  
  
  
  And offcourse there are some tabbed browser variants using the IE engine.
  

• I dont know about the speed but I can't agree more on the new layout of the asp.net site ... its simply doesnt look that it was done by professional but more by juniors ...
  

• Steve: Just a CS Forums problem -- ASP.NET is plenty fast (if not faster than anything else).
  
  --------------
  
  Everyone else:
  
  
  
  I'm using FF 1.5 (user-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5)
  
  
  
  with the following extensions:
  
  DOM Inspector 1.8
  
  Talkback 1.5
  
  Web Developer 1.0.1
  
  Image Zoom 0.2.3
  
  
  
  Loading a page takes too long, scrolling takes even longer, and switching back to an already loaded page takes too long. And yes, the next or page specific link takes 2 clicks in FF for me and at least one or two others apparently.
  
  
  
  While its nowhere near as slow in IE, its also obviously slower than it used to be -- and its just got too much eye candy to be as useful. A lot of the bells and whistles make for a nice feature list, but the beauty of the earlier versions was they were quick and easy to use.
  

• Hmmm, I use FF 1.5 here and at aspnetpodcast.com site to enter and view data with no problems. I don't view the forums through the web much (mostly the nntp interface), but I haven't seen any problems this morning so far.
  
  
  
  I think the problem is the new version of CS thats out there.
  

• I know that CS started using components from ComponentArt.com. I like the look and feel of these components and I know they work well with major browsers. My question is what parts of CS are using ComponentArt?
  
  
  
  Abdu
  

• Wally: I don't see any links or info on the NNTP possibility -- where is that option? I knew CS had that option, but I didn't know they were available on the ASP.NET forums.
  

• The ComponentArt stuff is cool, but some of it isn't very speedy.
  
  
  
  I thought for awhile about giving up POP Forums and selling out, but CS has become too big and not useful if you plan to customize much of anything. I think Alex Lowe posted some stat about several thousand files being touched since the last build. You've gotta be kidding me!
  
  
  
  It's just too much a corporate product now.
  

• that page wilco pointed to took 15 seconds to load in FF 1.5 here (and I'm on a 700KBYTE/sec internet line). I find it odd that the forums over at asp.net are so slow. Also when you reply, it's very slow, as it has to load all those darn icons again, like I care about that... :/
  
  
  
  I'm not sure if it's the server hardware that makes it slow, or the software design. (or the stored procedures! ;) sorry couldn't resist ;)) What I do know of our own forum software is that it doesn't have to be slow. A forum is not rocket-science.
  

• Paul: You can open an NNTP reader and point it at forums.asp.net. Use your forums username/password if you wish to post to the forums.
  
  
  
  The version of the forums that is on forums.asp.net does not do a good job pointing out the fact that NNTP is enabled and how you should use it. Later versions do a better job.
  

• I will also state that the forums absolutely suck in Firefox 1.5
  
  
  
  The forums are *pig slow* when scrolling up and down, and the search/advance page must have been designed by a summer student intern.
  
  
  
  I think they now are faced with the problem of going back and rebuilding from the old version, this time with a clear plan in mind.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

• As we say in the WoW community (and elsewhere no doubt), Jeff: QFT.
  

• My computer struggles to show the page. When I see the memory usage by firefox.exe in Task Manager, its too much while I am visiting forums . Is firefox prefetching some of the link contents?
  

• Karl: You mean quote for truth or quantum field theory? ;)
  

• Odd, forums.asp.net is now suddenly a lot faster (threads show up in 4-5 seconds... )
  

• Hmm. The NNTP interface to forums.asp.net shows the postings up to 15-dec-2005, no posting later than that shows up in my newsreader. Strange...
  

• The NNTP interface is working for me with current postings. And it is very nice, although I still think the web UI should be "simpler" and speedier.
  

• Far be it from me to refrain from piling on CS. I haven't liked what I've seen in the code since it was .Text. But...
  
  
  
  If it's taking a long time to scroll, is that really a problem with CS itself? Granted, more complex HTML takes longer to render, uses up more resources on the client, etc... But I've gone to some pig ugly sites (yahoo.com comes to mind) with some of the ugliest HTML I've ever seen in my life (tables with tables with tables and divs within more tables) and the only time I've had a scrolling issue is when
  
  a) my system has been overloaded
  
  b) they've had a lot of animated GIF's and/or Flash on the page.
  
  
  
  I just hopped over to forums.asp.net in FF 1.5( running the webdev and Yahoo toolbar extension) right now to check. Picked the largest forum I could find (Getting Started) and had no problem scrolling. All I have open right now is 5 tabs in FF and VS2K5 (which is a memory pig if there ever was one) "Advanced Search" did take a while to load for me, but the search went pretty quick. I think the slow loading is due to the tree view. Really, who still uses a tree view. What is this, 1995?
  
  
  
  So, to summarize. Loading the ASP.net forums in FF 1.5 works okie dokie for me.
  
  

• I ran a syntax validator over the front page. It was set to stop at 200 errors, it got to the limit. Mostly repeats of errors that are odd parts of the standard (in my view) ("nowrap = 'true'" instead of "nowrap = 'nowrap'" and "class = ''" type stuff). There was quite a lot of unneeded space taken by spurious space characters at the end of lines. (A great way to consume bandwidth!!)
  
  
  
  Layout of code looked pretty clean except for some unnecessary line breaks within long tags.
  

• The only problem I see with Firefox 1.5 is the above mentioned that you sometimes have to click Next twice. Other than that, the forum works as fast or faster as forums in general work, and I think the design is quite nice, and going back and forward is super fast?
  

• Personally, my suspicion is the FreeTextBox control that they are using. I currently use it and it is VERY slow loading.
  

• John: I'm not talking about pages with the FreeTextBox. And I personally use the FreeTextBox and don't have problems of this type. It definitely loads slower than other things (its a lot of javascript so that's the way it is), but it doesn't affect the entire page like this.
  

• "As for the performance, Frans, it performs and has performed very, very well. I suspect your problems may have more to do with the distanace of the network [than with other things]"
  
  I've no idea why it's slower. If I go to the forums of anandtech.com, which are one of the largest forums in the world, and which run a commercial .NET forum package, the forums are very very fast, click a topic -> bang its there. No wait, nothing.
  
  
  
  Looking at how the forums look at forums.asp.net and for example at anandtech is that at forums.asp.net, there are way more graphics in the layout of the forums.
  
  
  
  Though what's odd is that yesterday, it loaded extremely slow (and no other internet activity was going on here) but now it's OK. Perhaps there are glitches in network connectivity or dips in performance here and there and Paul ran into one of them. I know the US of A is now asleep and perhaps that's the reason why it's fast, I'll try again later today to see if it makes a difference.
  
  
  
  About the NNTP interface, I can't get it to read messages later than 15 october 2005 (I said december but it's october). Very strange. I do get a connection error first and the second attempt loads the data, I use XanaNews newsreader. Also weird is that whatever I fill in for a password, it doesn't matter. Perhaps that's the reason of the oddness I experience with NNTP and forums.asp.net.
  

• 
  
  Frans: I guess the solution for you is to check the forums when the the US of A is asleep :)
  
  
  
  I think one way to troubleshoot this issue is to load a page without rendering it like using a text based browser or your app and see if the whole html loads fast and time it. Then see if the images load fast. Turn off images in the browser and test. The rendering could be the bottleneck.
  
  
  
  Do other Mozilla based browsers have the same issue? Try Netscape and flock.
  
  
  
  Abdu
  

• 
  
  *******************************
  
  I tried to to use the forums again today and found them to even slower today than ever before !! they load slow and scroll slow.
  
  
  
  Pig slow x 4!!
  
  
  
  somebody fix those things - they do not work with Firefox 1.5
  
  
  
  *******************************
  
  
  
  

• asp.net forums SUCK ..period.
  
  it takes them 3-4 hours to even show your post.
  
  and by then, you probably figured it out.
  
  Basically, if you are on a tight time budget, they are useless.
  
  
  
  
  
  i dont know why they monitor it by hand when you can automate the process and show the posting right away as opposed to half a day.
  
  
  
  

• Jenny: Unmoderated forums tend to get spammed so much that they quickly become even more useless. Most questions that must be answered fast have actually already been asked and answered somewhere anyhow -- there are far too many that don't even search, but instead just post and expect others to do their work for them. On the other hand, when it really is something new that hasn't been asked and answered, then you also tend to value the answer when it does come.
  

• oh yeah i understand, moderation is essential. But few hours is a bit long to wait. Every time i search and find question similar to mine, the results that come up also have 0 Replies. I guess what happens is that by the time the posting comes through, it ends up being pushed to the back...since the postings are time sorted.
  
  
  
  If they did it fast enough, that would have been ok, the way it right now is not helping much.
  

• here is a good idea - display the posts based on the time when they are moderated and not originally posted.
  
  
  
  anyways, pardon my ranting, i am just really annoyed by the lack of good forums
  

• Paul, You probably keep an eye on Rick's blog? He's just had a rant about it to. Re the moderation - I remember in the early days Community Server had a feature that only moderated the user for the first 10 (customisable) posts. Once they had 10 approved, they were unmoderated after that. I thought that was a neat feature. I wonder if it's implemented in the ASP.Net forums.
  

• I have to agree with Jenny on the moderation part. Sometime, waiting for a few hours is a bit too long.
  
  
  
  Manish Jadhav