Web browsers and scrolling pages

HateEternal · #1 April 6th, 2004, 03:15 PM

I've been becoming more and more annoyed with browsing web pages on my mac. Some pages are sooooo laggy when i scroll or even when I type in some text boxes such as this one. Are there any Mac browsers that arn't plagued by this? It happens on both IE and Safari and is really starting to get on my nerves. I use FireFox on my PC and will get it if it offers better performance for my mac. Any others?

Would things be better with more memory? Right now i have 256 in my G4 iBook, I am planning on maxing it out at some point but i don't have the cash now.

perfessor101 · #2 April 6th, 2004, 07:31 PM

I have not noticed any draginess at all on either my G4/1.25x2 MDD or G3 iBook 600 using Safari, Internet Exploder, or Firefox. (Well maybe some when running FireFox or IE in Windows XP under VPC 6.1 but that is understandable.) You might start by running something that cleans out your cache files such as Onyx or Cocktail. If you like Firefox it runs well as a Native OS X application too.

256 MB of RAM is below the limit for decent OS X performance. The least amount of RAM I have is 640 MB on the iBook 600.

HateEternal · #3 April 6th, 2004, 08:26 PM

I am guessing it is the ram too. This site --> www.anandtech.com for example is HORRID on my machine when i try and use my scroll wheel.

perfessor101 · #4 April 6th, 2004, 08:38 PM

Well if I were going to pick an example of how to design a web site to make browsers look bad, that would be it. However, it does seem scroll a bit smoother and faster with FireFox 0.8.

Every browser comparison tests I have ever seen has invariably arrived a the conclusion that one browser performed better on one type of site than another, but no browser was absolutely superior on all types of sites. Your example appears to be optimized for the Mozilla rendering engine used in Netscape, FireFox and Camino. But it still is acceptable with IE and Safari on a G4/1.25x2 MDD with 1.5 GB of RAM.

bobw · #5 April 7th, 2004, 10:42 AM

www.anandtech.com scrolls the same for me as other sites, using Safari 1.2.1. No problem at all. Logitech MX700 Scroll Wheel mouse. G4/1GHz/1.25GGB memory.

The problem is not with that site, but on your end. More memory would definitely be a good place to start.

btoth · #6 April 7th, 2004, 10:46 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by HateEternal

Would things be better with more memory? Right now i have 256 in my G4 iBook, I am planning on maxing it out at some point but i don't have the cash now.

Open up your Activity Monitor and see how much of your memory is being used. I don't notice any scrolling issues with 512MB of RAM. I do wish some Apple apps scrolled faster though when using the keyboard to scroll.

I do however have graphical scroll errors since 10.3.3... I attached a pic.

Lycander · #7 April 7th, 2004, 11:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by btoth

I do wish some Apple apps scrolled faster though when using the keyboard to scroll.

Can you change the keyboard repeat rate in System Prefs? The faster the repeat rate, the faster your page will scroll.

nyuchi · #8 May 1st, 2004, 04:24 AM

I was wondering if anyone else has this annoying thing with horizontal scrolling in firefox 0.8. I find my pages run off the right edge, and it doesn't give me a way to scroll on over...even when I maximize whe screen. I'm on a powerbook g4.