Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Slow Scrolling Mystery Solved?

Since the blog redesign some of you have expressed issues with the pages scrolling really slowly in Firefox. I believe we have an answer.

Go into your browsers "Prefences" and in the "Advanced" settings, make sure you uncheck the "Use smooth scrolling" box (see illustration to the left). This should make the blog scroll much faster.

26 comments:

Anonymous said...

For Firefox version 3.6.8 (latest available) the navigation from the Mozilla menu bar (there's a pun in there somewhere) is Tools/Options/Advanced/General

Scrolling is still not Road Runner speedy, but it is better than molasses in winter.

Anonymous said...

Safari does not offer this setting - maybe that's why I wasn't having trouble scrolling.

Anonymous said...

I'm having the same issue with Google's Chrome browser. There doesn't seem to be a "use smooth scrolling" in the options. Any thoughts?

Thanks

Unknown said...

This will help a little but won't solve the problem.
The main problem is the amount of videos per page that's being displayed. This applies a great deal of weight to the browser, specially if you're on Firefox.
IE and Safari will fair better, but not by a whole lot.

Anonymous said...

As far as I know, smooth scrolling is turned off in Firefox by default (at least in Windows).

What causes the slow-scrolling problem is the static background image (and by static, I mean that it doesn't move when you scroll), with the transparent boxes.
The only way to fix this is to unfortunately remove the background (or change it to a non-static one) :(

Anonymous said...

No joy. I turned off "smooth scrolling" and it still lags badly.

I tried from my office yesterday, running the same version of Firefox (3.6.8) and the scrolling was fine, even with "smooth scrolling" turned on. The only major difference was that at work we've got excellent connectivity (I work at a university with very good infrastructure), while at home I've got ADSL. The workstations are comparable, each with about 4 GB of memory, though the office machine is an x86_64 and the home box is an i686. Both are running CentOS 5 (the free variant of Red Hat Enterprise Linux) and both have four processors.

On more interesting topics, I picked up some burrata at my favorite cheese shop (Venissimo Cheese in Del Mar, if you're in the San Diego area -- nice folks with a great selection of cheeses and, no, they're not paying me to say that) this afternoon and am looking forward to making the Burrata Bruschetta with Grilled Figs this evening. Yum.

Frederik S. said...

This problem might be related to the transparency as well as the amount of data per site (2737 lines of code) but i think its mainly the transparency.

BTW I'm not having any troubles using IE8 on windows 7 with a fairly decent rig.

blogagog said...

Just a head's up - I'm not noticing any problems whatsoever using Firefox.

Well, there is ONE problem... You haven't taught us how to use artichokes yet! But that's probably not because of the new web design.

Chef John said...

thanks, but artichokes?? type it into the new search box and you'll see some.

Anonymous said...

Like I said (I'm the anonymous in the 2nd comment), it's the background image that's causing the problem.

To prove my point, I've created a very small Greasemonkey script which removes the background. Scrolling is much faster without the background.
The script can be found here: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/83895

sequimteeth said...

The scroll is great on Windows 7 + Google Chrome. I am scrolling as I eat Dungeness Crab cakes ala' Chef John - especially good as the crabs come from the waters just in front of my home. Thanks for the great site Chef John and for the continued instruction.

KrisD said...

jinkies, I had hoped that would fix the scroll, but it wasn't checked in the first place. :-(

I so love the static figs...(aren't they an indie band). They are just so juicy and delicious looking. (But then, I also miss the poached egg on the hash pic too...I love me my food pr0n)

Razors Edge said...

anonymous, thanks for that greasemonkey script. Makes the site a lot faster.

xacro said...

I agree with Anonymous #2 in that it's the background image that's the problem. I do some casual web design as a hobby, and I have experienced slow scrolling due to background images that are set as fixed (i.e. images that do not move as the user scrolls down the page). Transparency and smooth scrolling just make it worse.

Paste the following line (it's javascript like greasemonkey and it's safe, I promise) into your address bar and hit enter to make the background image scroll:
javascript:void(document.body.style.backgroundAttachment="scroll");

It should be snappy now with OR without smooth scrolling. Unfortunately this ruins the effect of the design in that once the user scrolls past the background image, the rest of the background is green.

PS: Still a great design Chef John! The scrolling issue didn't really bother me that much, but it may be a problem for people with more average computers as evidenced.

Anonymous said...

After reading the comments quickly, I have to add, this is weird:

I don't know if the smooth scroll-option is on, but yesterday the site was slow as a turtle to scroll... but today it's magically fast/normal!!!

And yes, firefox here.

Frederik S. said...

Maybe you could try to use different file formats such as *.png or *.gif for the background image. Seems more like a bug for some users than a real performance issue.

Emily said...

I'm liking the new blog setup, Chef. It's a good change but not too much and everything seems to still be in the same place. My world would be in chaos if I couldn't find those quick links via. the vid recipe categories.

Greg said...

It scrolls fine on a fast computer.

Anonymous said...

I used the AdBlock Plus extension to block the background image and after a page reload the scrolling is much improved.

Anonymous said...

Same here, after removing the background using greasemonkey the site scrolls like normal.

Anonymous said...

I use firefox, your solution doesn't make it better. I would better to change to the previous background and setting. Now every time I login in Food Wish, It is some painful and the loading is so heavy... It probably drives away lots of traffic.

KrisF said...

With Firefox I have to enter the javascript code posted above. Works fine then. A pain to have to enter this every time I want to view the site with Firefox. Easier to just use Safari or Explorer when I want to see Food Wishes.

Atif said...

There are the steps I did for Firefox:
-Right click on page
-click "View Page info"
-Click on the Media tab
-Click on http://0.tqn.com/d/americanfood/1/0/k/J/-/-/backgrd2.jpg
-Then click on "Block Images from 0.tqn.com"

As the other commenters said, once you block the background image, you get a nice green background and the page is much faster to scroll.

w3bd3v said...

Hi Chef John,

I am a professional web developer, and mostly develop websites for professional sports teams. This is definitely an issue with the static background, and transparencies. You are better off making the photo have a gradient that flows into a solid color at the bottom. Then don't make it static (that's what really kills most browsers unfortunately). You will still have your background, but as users scroll down it's just plain background. I know it's not quite as aesthetically pleasing, but sometimes you just need to compromise. :)

Also I would recommend cutting down the amount of posts per page considering how much video content there is. This will also cut down the need to scroll as much, which should make those slow-scrollers happy.

If you need any help with this don't hesitate to contact me. You've helped me so much with your cooking skills, I could at least return the favor!

Take care!

Justin

Anonymous said...

Love your site. Followed the instructions for the scrolling. Sorry, but it's still a major problem for me using Firefox. Very slow. Good luck with your new web design. Great recipes.

Anonymous said...

Thank you! I will now go on this blog every day!