GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 347225
Tab switching is much slower than in Firefox
Last modified: 2007-05-30 17:29:37 UTC
Please describe the problem: I am in the process of trying to switch from Firefox to Epiphany. I find that switching between tabs rapidly (for example when looking for a specific tab) is much slower. "Experimentally" comparing this by opening a large number of tabs with the same pages in both Firefox 1.5.0.4 and Epiphany 2.14.2.1 (both from Ubuntu Dapper) seems to confirm this. It might be a good target for performance optimization ... Steps to reproduce: Actual results: Expected results: Does this happen every time? Other information:
I cannot reproduce this here (ubuntu dapper too), tab switching is instantaneous here. If you start epiphany from console (after closing all epiphany windows), is there any output there?
I just tried again. Now it works much faster. My test system is quite complex : - during the day, I use my laptop on a dockstation, using the dock's video card, and the free ati driver. - during the evening, I use my laptop standalone, using the proprietary fglrx ati driver, which is much faster. Right now (fglrx), tab switching looks the same between firefox and epiphany. However, during the day, it is noticeably slower. Is it possible that epiphany is more X-intensive than Firefox when switching tabs ?
I don't think so, no.
Is there any way I could benchmark this more accurately ?
Maybe try running epiphany under gdb and press Ctrl-C when it's switching tabs and get a trace? Or using a profiler.
Follow-up on this: On my undocked laptop (using the proprietary ATI driver - fglrx), I don't see any speed problem. However, when I dock my laptop and use my dockstation's PCI card (much slower), the problem is easy to spot. Maybe it's a problem with redrawing too much stuff when switching tabs, or something like that ?
I have a similar problem when using the 'nv' xorg module, as opposed to the proprietary 'nvidia' module which is nice and fast.
When I first reported this bug, I was using a complex setup which included a PCI graphic card to be able to do dual screen. I'm not using it anymore, so the slowness is not noticeable anymore. I'm reporting this to the performance mailing list, maybe somebody will be able to provide some insight.