Background rendering very slow in IE6 due to tiny gifs

  • Thread starter Thread starter Philip Herlihy
  • Start date Start date
P

Philip Herlihy

Some sites are almost impossibly slow to use (e.g. www.comcast.net) because
the background draws so slowly even on my 2GHz laptop, which has a 1920 x
1200 screen. Processor utilisation reaches 100%.

I've spotted the common link - these sites have backgrounds which are tiny
gifs, (less than 50 bytes) repeated ad nauseam. Obviously, my large screen
will need a lot of them to fill it, but if I open the site in FrontPage, it
renders almost instantly. If I open the site online in Mozilla, it also
renders immediately.

Why is it so slow in IE6 (SP1)? Is there some caching problem which can be
fixed by changing a setting somewhere? Glad of any advice!
 
No problem here with IE6 SP1, Windows XP Home.

--

==============================================
Thomas A. Rowe (Microsoft MVP - FrontPage)
WEBMASTER Resources(tm)

FrontPage Resources, Forums, WebCircle,
MS KB Quick Links, etc.
==============================================
 
That's really odd - it's still horribly slow on my machine. I've looked at
Task manager, and while there is only a brief spike on the networking
indicator, the processor utilisation goes up to 100%, mostly kernel
utilisation. Otherwise, my display is like greased lightening, and I can
watch DVD movies without a hiccup. Something, somewhere, doesn't like these
backgrounds made of tiny gifs!
 
Hi Phil,
Takes about 80 seconds with my dialup connection.
I shouldn't think it would be more than 5 seconds on your connection.

What are you running for anti-virus s/w?
You might want to run disk cleanup and empty all temp folders.
 
Running Norton 2003. Tried disabling it - didn't make any difference. I
ran disk cleanup and also Norton Clean Sweep. That did seem to make it draw
slightly differently, but still slow, and I suspect it's because Clean Sweep
nags you to close all browsers first. I now think that it gets slower to
draw (note that there seems to be no network activity) the more times the
browser has been asked to redraw, until it takes about 10 seconds to redraw
on resize. Nor does there seem to be much sign of disk activity, so it's
not fetching that tiny gif over and over. Weird. This only happens with a
handful of sites - all ones which use tiled tiny gifs. Can I be the only
one to get this effect? It takes just as long with my broadband connection
disconnected and the same screen simply resized Normal-Window >> Full
Screen, so it's an in-memory thing.

I've also tried Mozilla, which loads like lightening, Netscape 7, which is
also pretty fast, and Opera 7, which seems to render quickly but reliably
crashes on (only) this site!

Something's going on...
 
Other option to check is your graphics card driver, hardware acceleration settings, and directX, all of which affect screen draw
times

--




| Running Norton 2003. Tried disabling it - didn't make any difference. I
| ran disk cleanup and also Norton Clean Sweep. That did seem to make it draw
| slightly differently, but still slow, and I suspect it's because Clean Sweep
| nags you to close all browsers first. I now think that it gets slower to
| draw (note that there seems to be no network activity) the more times the
| browser has been asked to redraw, until it takes about 10 seconds to redraw
| on resize. Nor does there seem to be much sign of disk activity, so it's
| not fetching that tiny gif over and over. Weird. This only happens with a
| handful of sites - all ones which use tiled tiny gifs. Can I be the only
| one to get this effect? It takes just as long with my broadband connection
| disconnected and the same screen simply resized Normal-Window >> Full
| Screen, so it's an in-memory thing.
|
| I've also tried Mozilla, which loads like lightening, Netscape 7, which is
| also pretty fast, and Opera 7, which seems to render quickly but reliably
| crashes on (only) this site!
|
| Something's going on...
|
|
| --
| ######################
| ## PH, London ##
| ######################
|
|
| jaf wrote:
| > Hi Phil,
| > Takes about 80 seconds with my dialup connection.
| > I shouldn't think it would be more than 5 seconds on your connection.
| >
| > What are you running for anti-virus s/w?
| > You might want to run disk cleanup and empty all temp folders.
| >
| >
| >
| > | >> Some sites are almost impossibly slow to use (e.g. www.comcast.net)
| >> because the background draws so slowly even on my 2GHz laptop, which
| >> has a 1920 x 1200 screen. Processor utilisation reaches 100%.
| >>
| >> I've spotted the common link - these sites have backgrounds which
| >> are tiny gifs, (less than 50 bytes) repeated ad nauseam. Obviously,
| >> my large screen will need a lot of them to fill it, but if I open
| >> the site in FrontPage, it renders almost instantly. If I open the
| >> site online in Mozilla, it also renders immediately.
| >>
| >> Why is it so slow in IE6 (SP1)? Is there some caching problem which
| >> can be fixed by changing a setting somewhere? Glad of any advice!
| >>
| >>
| >> --
| >> ######################
| >> ## PH, London ##
| >> ######################
|
|
 
Hardware acceleration is "Maximum", and this is the only problem I
encounter, and only on two or three sites, so I'd doubt there's anything
much amiss. I'm using the latest patches for DirectX from the Windows
Update site. Mozilla copes fine!
 
Back
Top