GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 609237
epiphany has slow / sluggish performance on slashdot
Last modified: 2010-08-05 15:52:37 UTC
On my netbook, Epiphany is sluggish when scrolling slashdot.org. Chromium-browser is not. I am using compiz, ubuntu 9.10, the webkit and epiphany PPAs.
This is basically too generic to be useful. Is Epiphany/WebKitGTK+ only slow in slashdot.org? Is it generally slow but unbearably slow there? Has it ever been fast and it has regressed recently? What you should do is use some profiling tool and open a bug along the lines of "Epiphany/WebKitGTK+ spends way too much time doing FOO when scrolling slashdot.org". That would be a specific issue that someone could look at and fix by producing a patch that could close the bug.
And btw, I'm just saying this because the more specific a bug report is the more likely is that someone will try spending some time fixing it. The more you give the more you get, I guess.
Sure, here's some more info: - it was slow back in the gecko days too, it's not a regression - there may be other websites, but slashdot is my main stress test here. It probably has some insane amount of css/javascript trickery going on here that slows down scrolling - all browsers suffer on this to some extent, Firefox 3.5 is affected albeit in a less significant way than Epiphany-webkit 2.29.x. Chromium is the only browser which doesn't lag at all and is butter-smooth, so I'm considering Slashdot to be a "good" benchmark/stress test. Other websites are less noticeable than slashdot on this front. I don't have the expertise to profile epiphany. Just open it up side by side with chromium-browser and firefox, and scroll with a touchpad. Not sure this would be apparent on a core2quad processor, but it really shows up when using an Atom processor and an integrated intel GPU (what many notebooks have).
Here's a video demo/comparison: http://jeff.ecchi.ca/public/epiphany-609237-slashdot.ogv
Tried again with 2.30 today. Compare the scrolling smoothness of Epiphany vs chromium-browser on http://www.apple.com/ipad/ No comparison. Epiphany is unusably slow trying to scroll that page, and Chromium is butter-smooth. Can you reproduce now?
I am pretty sure you'll find boxBlur to be the culprit (as it is for identi.ca).
Is boxBlur used on slashdot?
Another test case: http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/finalcutpro/effects-transitions.html Just hover the mouse onto the (text) menu items on the left. It lags to death (and chromium is butter-smooth).
Slashdot is WAY faster than these other sites for me. File these under a different bug, or under #622829 maybe? Or just edit this bug and set that as a dupe of this?
alexg__ from #epiphany suggested it might be related to https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=39582
(In reply to comment #9) > Slashdot is WAY faster than these other sites for me. File these under a > different bug, or under #622829 maybe? Or just edit this bug and set that as a > dupe of this? Did slashdot change their theme since the time of this original bug report? It's fast for me now but these are sites (google reader, link to apple in comment #8, etc) are very slow.
Nope, slashdot hasn't changed. It still lags to death when scrolling on a netbook. Of course, don't test this on a Core2Quad processor, you won't notice the lag.
I'd want to see #622829 fixed. That's a big performance issue. If it happens to resolve this issue, cool. If this is still a problem when that bug is addressed, I'd suggest this be re-opened seperately. Since that bug is more general for now, I'm marking this as a dupe. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 622829 ***