SPCR web design costs points!

[dukla2000]

A curious discovery (benefit of Linux): something on the SPCR pages is stealing CPU cycles Basically FAH gets more cpu cycles if SPCR web pages are NOT open. Which is a shame! Possibly the 'active' ad at the top of the page? If/when I understand Firebird better will try disable them, which would also be a shame!

Example: first with no SPCR page open (but 2 other tabs open in Firebird)

Code: Select all

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
23080 user1     39  19  6640 6604 1056 R 99.1  2.6 499:43.02 FahCore_78.exe
25368 user1     16   0   960  960  744 R  0.7  0.4   0:12.81 top
 8897 user1     16   0  4608 2372 1560 S  0.3  0.9   2:38.81 suseplugger
 9406 user1     15   0 14080  13m  11m S  0.3  5.3   0:03.51 kdeinit
    1 root      15   0    88   72   52 S  0.0  0.0   0:04.99 init

Now open SPCR:

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  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
23080 user1     39  19  6640 6604 1056 R 96.5  2.6 505:05.95 FahCore_78.exe
24008 user1     16   0 39504  38m  21m S  2.0 15.4   4:09.97 MozillaFirebird
 8772 root      15   0 54520  20m 3228 S  0.7  8.2   8:21.12 X
 8897 user1     16   0  4608 2372 1560 S  0.3  0.9   2:39.58 suseplugger
 9406 user1     15   0 14192  13m  11m R  0.3  5.3   0:04.07 kdeinit
26059 user1     16   0   948  948  744 R  0.3  0.4   0:00.15 top
    1 root      15   0    88   72   52 S  0.0  0.0   0:04.99 init

[NeilBlanchard]

Hello:

Maybe it's the "flash" ads at the top of most pages?

[sbabb]

Yup, all of those slick animations that require client-side CPU cycles take those cycles away from whatever else you're doing (like folding.) They probably also contribute to the "slow" page load rating SPCR gets at Alexa. According to Alexa it takes 2.6 seconds to load the SPCR front page.

[MikeC]

Yup, all of those slick animations that require client-side CPU cycles take those cycles away from whatever else you're doing (like folding.) They probably also contribute to the "slow" page load rating SPCR gets at Alexa. According to Alexa it takes 2.6 seconds to load the SPCR front page.

According to Alexa...
www.HardOCP.com - Slow (80% of sites are faster), Avg Load Time: 3.5 Seconds
www.anandtech.com - Very Slow (90% of sites are faster), Avg Load Time: 6.1 Seconds
www.tomshardware.com - Very Slow (81% of sites are faster), Avg Load Time: 3.6 Seconds
www.overclockers.com - Very Slow (89% of sites are faster), Avg Load Time: 4.6 Seconds

[wussboy]

dukkla, there's a great firebird extension on the main extension screen that turns all flash animations into a box that says "Click to PLay" and won't play them unless you click there. I use it and it works great.

[Zhentar]

There's another firebird extension, 'remove anything' from extensionroom.mozdev.com it will allow you to right click on the ad and remove it from the page. The click to play flash thing is probably better for this though.

[sbabb]

I don't think SPCR is slow to load at all, but I did notice the rating on Alexa and think that the nasty review said something about being slow.

Alexa seems to be a bit "squirrely" about things sometimes. For example sometimes they give us a 1-star average rating and sometimes (right now, for example) they give us a 5-star rating. Sometimes they have a sample page from SPCR available, sometimes (now) they don't. And right now the speed rating says "Average" at 2.3 seconds.

Looking at their 5 top ranked sites right now I see Yahoo avg/3.3, MSN avg/2.1, Google v-fast/0.8, EBay slow/3.4, and Microsoft v-slow/5.7. Looks like today's break between average and slow is 3.3 to 3.4 seconds. Yesterday we SPCR was accused of being slow with a 2.6 second load time, if I remember right.

I'm all in favor of SPCR having sponsors and advertising them as is. I try to patronize our sponsors, and I also encourage the other vendors I patronize (like Newegg) to become SPCR sponsors. If they want to have flash/shockwave/Java/whatever animation in their ads, that's great (as long as nobody thinks that those "vibrating" banners are a good idea.) Though my approval is hardly needed for any of this (except the vibrating banners - that might make me hurt someone.)