Sep. 27th, 2007 [Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος]

For a long time, I complained about sites using Javascript navigation because I didn't have a computer with enough extra horsepower to handle the extra drag reasonably and because I didn't trust Javascript security-wise. After a while, folks started telling me the security situation had improved; then somebody tired of hearing me complain gave me a faster computer.

I'm now using a machine more than twice the speed of the one he gave me, most often (though I'm still running some slower ones as well), and have gotten used to having Javascript enabled (but am still grateful when Javascript bells and whistles gracefully fall back to standard HTML without it), and am glad I get to use AJAX sites despite some nagging doubts about Javascript security ... and now I've started running into Flash where it's a bell or a whistle or a look-at-me-I'm-cutting-edge instead of the places where Flash is useful, which is an extra layer of problem because at least one of the three browsers I'm switching back and forth between lately (not counting Lynx, which I use occasionally) doesn't seem to handle the Linux Flash plugin well -- but I digress...

And I'm spending way more time in X than I used to, because instead of mostly sitting at a Windows box and running most GUI apps locally and using telnet to do most of my Linux/Unix stuff, I'm now spending most of my time sitting at a Linux machine and running graphical tools locally (I did eventually resolve the problem of apps running downstairs not being able to display on the bedroom computer, by the way) and using VNC to run Windows programs more often than I move to sit at a different computer. So I'm hitting this fast-for-me (about half (?) the CPU speed of what nearly everybody else is running nowadays, AFAICT[*]) Linux machine harder than I used to and using newer, shinier versions of Linux than I used to. So I noticed some performance issues. And I wan't sure whether they were X problems I just hadn't used X enough to bump into before, or bloat creeping into Linux, or what. Most recent evidence points to the "or what".

After I've had the bedroom Linux box running a while, it gets slower and s l o w e r and ssslllooowwwweeeeerrrrrr until it gets so bad that I have to move the mouse excruciatingly slowly to avoid having the mouse cursor vanish, and switching windows means a wait. I have to save all the browser tabs I've got open, close down all the other crap I'm in the middle of, and log out and back in again ... or if I'm lucky, just kill and restart the browser. Then it performs okay for a while, but it starts slowing down again soon. anniemal has complained of similar behaviour on her Mac (running, of course, OS X).

I did notice that sometimes going back to one web page out of all the ones I'd previously had open would slow things down right away.

Well, I finally got around to going to the settings for the browser I'd been using most recently and changed it from "enable Javascript everywhere" to "allow Javascript only on the sites I okay".

It's like I got a new computer. Right now I've had two different graphical browsers running locally at the same time for a few days (plus a third running elsewhere but displaying here, which only counts for X resources, not for anything else), a reasonable pile o' tabs open (okay, so it's not a proper test until I'm back to my usual unreasonable number of open tabs) with gv, timidity, a couple of widgets, and the filesystem browser open, along with, of course, several telnet/xterm windows. I've gone to one of the deadly sites several times since I changed that Javascript setting. The computer is responding quite reasonably. At this rate, I'm inclined to fire up GIMP and see whether it continues to hum along happily.

So: nowadays I use computers that seem to be capable of handling the ubiquitous Javascript sanely up to a point, but some sites either drag the machine down or don't play nicely with having certain other sites open in the same browser; and the nasty sites are just common enough that I'm pretty much guaranteed to encounter them in casual surfing. I'm thinkin' it's buggy Javascript code that doesn't break quite badly enough if it's the only thing running on a developer's fast machine for the developers to realize they're causing trouble. That's only a guess, of course.

I'm cautiously adding sites to the "trusted to run Javascript" list (it's going to be a nuisance to synchronize the lists across multiple browsers, innit?), grumbling at the ones that insist on it to work at all, but adding them as long as they play nicely.

[*] 800MHz. I'm guessing most of y'all are running 1.6GHz machines these days with a few of you using faster machines ...? Is that guess at all reasonable?

With the assistance of the lovely and delightful sjo, I was able to accomplish my Absolutely-Must-Do tasks for the day; I did wind up trying to do a little bit more than I should have late in the day, and am paying for it, but with her assistance the amount of walking required was kept within the range my back and legs were up to today -- I started out feeling better than I'd expected to, but not well enough to get all the way to the clinic and back on my own. And time spent in the company of a friend I hadn't seen in far too long is always a nice side-effect.

WRT the TB test, as expected, we spent more time in the waiting room than all other stages of the expedition combined, and when I was called it took longer to walk back to the office where the nurse was than it did for him to glance at my arm, say, "Yep, negative. Thanks. See you later," and make the note in my chart.

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