About:Snappy

[Optimizer HD]

Two more reviews for IGC to go. Cross your fingers.

But its too late for it to make in to Fx 12 . Lets hope it gets Aurora Uplift approval .

[Omega X]

The move to Aurora happens tomorrow. If they can squeeze it in before the deadline, then it becomes apart of Fx12.

[dbcooper.dk]

On the D2D problems, from today's GFX meeting:

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/GFX/2012-January-30

Hardware Accelerated Performance in Powersave

bug 721273
Bas can reproduce
IE9 is way faster than us
Re-uploading images can be part of the problem
We don't retain gradients
Textures for text
D2D 1.1 can help a lot too
To do: PIX run with draw timing

[lithopsian]

Something is definitely wrong with the about:response calculated median times. The timings are sometimes changing in ways that are mathematically impossible, jumping up and down between very high and very low numbers, but with low standard deviations.

Mostly they are believable though. I get typical timings of around 50ms and lower. Occasionally some high results creep in which seem to be due to trying to contention displaying two popups at once, for example a tooltip and a context menu.

The doorhanger popups seem very slow. Perhaps just an indication that other things are going on when they are being shown? Mine will mostly be from installing addons and saving passwords.

[Frank Lion]

The doorhanger popups seem very slow.

Which is why third party theme writers don't use -

Code: Select all

 -moz-transition: opacity 300ms;

...for this, as the default theme does, because it feels/looks like a 'hang'.

[lithopsian]

I never realised, but then my graphics don't transition very smoothly anyway. Just takes a while to appear. I'll try overriding in userchrome and see if I can improve things.

Edit: beautiful! It comes on instantly now.

[Frank Lion]

Edit: beautiful! It comes on instantly now.

Yeah, there are 3 areas on a UI where there must NOT be any hangs - tabs, menus and popups - otherwise users will notice immediately. This 'rule' determines what graphics we use, how we code the areas and definitely no fancy transition effects.

For example, to get the tabs on most of my stuff looking as they do, I use 3 images (left/middle/right) and this gives a '3D' effect to them. To overcome any possible 3 image hang hit, I code the tabbrowser side very simply and also 'introduce' the images at the start of the code. The result is instant tab action.

Tooltips need/have built-in a delay, obviously, otherwise they would keep popping up on mouseover to somewhere else.

All the theme guys know the stuff above and the Mozilla UI guys should really be made to make a theme, so that they understand the inter-relationships between graphics and UI coding...or, even just learn the UI coding bit properly...especially if they want to be 'snappy'

[patrickjdempsey]

Sigh. Nothing says snappiness like waiting for animations. I would bet there's also a *real* performance hit from most of the CSS animation stuff aside from the visual delay. At least they gave us the about:config options to disable the hard-coded JS animations that themes can't mess with.

[ferongr]

Wouldn't it make sense to file a bug and with Snappy in the whiteboard regarding the doorhanger issue?

[Frank Lion]

Wouldn't it make sense to file a bug and with Snappy in the whiteboard regarding the doorhanger issue?

They know where we are, they only have to ask. Nicely, of course.

[dbcooper.dk]

Wouldn't it make sense to file a bug and with Snappy in the whiteboard regarding the doorhanger issue?

+1. This would make a nice bug.

[patrickjdempsey]

Just be prepared for the same doublespeak explanation that was given to me when I complained that tab opening animations felt like a delay.... that users perceive animations as "faster" than instantaneous, and that actually Mozilla has been adding animations into Firefox to make it seem faster.

[JayhawksRock]

I guess they figure Slidey = Snappy ?

[patrickjdempsey]

There is a real bug with the identity box doorhangers though... the interference with the tooltip... actually this is a UI problem throughout Firefox when activating menus or context menus on items with tooltips. The tooltip delay will cause a slight delay to the popup appearing as well as overlapping competeing space.

[lithopsian]

Just be prepared for the same doublespeak explanation that was given to me when I complained that tab opening animations felt like a delay.... that users perceive animations as "faster" than instantaneous, and that actually Mozilla has been adding animations into Firefox to make it seem faster.

I may be cynical, but I suspect you're right. They will just dig their heels in and claim it fools people into thinking it is faster than it is. Well maybe on the super-computers they are working with, but as demonstrated it just hangs for a quarter of a second before I get to see anything on my very average machine.