Sort-by-name slow to work..

Discussion of bugs in Mozilla Firefox
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pjafrombbay
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Re: Slow Firefox 3 bookmarks, and Sort-by-name does not work

Post by pjafrombbay »

penlamp wrote:... Are there other browsers out there that can handle thousands of bookmarks fast? Opera? Google Chrome? What?


I run Firefox 2.0.0.20, Internet Explorer 8.2 beta (because my wife likes it #-o ) and Opera 9.63 (in an effort to lure her away from IE :roll: ). Opera is much faster than either of the others and Firefox 3 (which I up-graded to recently by mistake).

I like Firefox and have been a loyal user since its very early days but the inability to sort has always been an issue. The Java applet Firesort has overcome the problem with Firefox 1 and 2 but apparently will not be redeveloped to work with Firefox 3.

The only draw-backs I have with Opera is its add-blocking is not as good as Firefox with the AdBlock Plus plugin and it has problems with some Javascript based applications. Nothing's perfect [-o<

Regards,
Peter
There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. - Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, ch. 6
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pjafrombbay
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Re: Slow Firefox 3 bookmarks, and Sort-by-name does not work

Post by pjafrombbay »

pjafrombbay wrote:... I like Firefox and have been a loyal user since its very early days but the inability to sort has always been an issue. The Java applet Firesort has overcome the problem with Firefox 1 and 2 but apparently will not be redeveloped to work with Firefox 3.


I need to eat a small piece of humble pie. I bit the bullet and installed FF 3.0.5 and then searched for bookmark sorting plugins. There are several but the one that seems to work best is SortPlaces (see http://www.andyhalford.com/sortplaces/index.html). This plugin adds a "Sort Bookmarks" option in the "Bookmarks" main menu option. It just works! Very good.

FF 3 seems to have a lot more plugins that now work with it; most of my previous set would not work last time I tried it but now "Flat Bookmark Editing" and "View Source Chart" are the only two that don't work.

FF 3 is deemed Ok and suitable for use.

Regards,
Peter =D> =D> =D>
There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. - Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, ch. 6
Henderson
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Re: Slow Firefox 3 bookmarks, and Sort-by-name does not work

Post by Henderson »

Thanks very much for this info. I was ready to go back to Firefox 2 because of how insanely slow the bookmark system is. Firefox 3 will entirely lock up while trying to move a folder containing several bookmarks, with Firefox 2 it was an instant move. It's a bit more bearable with the plugin SortPlace though. But it's still so slow I'll probably not convert over my 2 main PCs to Firefox 3.0 and will stick with 2.0 until that improves.
Henderson
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Re: Slow Firefox 3 bookmarks, and Sort-by-name does not work

Post by Henderson »

I too am very disappointed with how slow the bookmark system is in Firefox 3, like others it's unbearable for me, totally freezing up Firefox for minutes at a time depending on what you want to move or delete. I have 3 computers and only my least used one has been switched over to 3 for now. The other 2 will continue with Firefox 2 until there's a major improvement in the bookmark system. Yes, I've installed SortPlaces and that has helped the sorting issue, but the slowness continues to be a major headache.
penlamp
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Re: Slow Firefox 3 bookmarks, and Sort-by-name does not work

Post by penlamp »

There are some reports on Mozilla Bugzilla. My impression from reading the MozillaZine forums and Bugzilla is that the Firefox 3 bookmarking software is database-driven (SQLite) and is very buggy.

It reminds of why so many websites are going back to plain HTML from datebase-driven and/or other dynamic websites.
zebradrache
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Re: Sort-by-name slow to work..

Post by zebradrache »

I posted some tips here:
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=708655&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=15
which -may- help somewhat.
Last edited by zebradrache on May 13th, 2009, 1:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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tuk0z
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Re: Slow Firefox 3 bookmarks, and Sort-by-name does not work

Post by tuk0z »

biriss wrote:
SalmonDay wrote:It is now v3.0.4, and I'm suffering through a similarly painful lag, Biriss--except it is now 30 seconds to a minute per bookmark.


Well, I bit the bullet myself and upgraded to 3.0.4 this week too, with news of the next version of 2.0.0.19 being the last and also losing some security features.

This time I did a completely clean install and again tried all the tweaks and tips I could find to speed things up, but the Firefox 3.0.4 Bookmarking system is still unbearably slow. In Firefox 2, I used the standard "Bookmark this page" with Openbook, but I've switched to using the Sidebar and dragging links from the navigation bar in an effort to retain my sanity. Unfortunately, creating new folders still causes the browser to hang for 20+ seconds. Using the Sidebar also takes a few more inconvenient steps than 2.x with Openbook.

I don't know how the developers are testing this. Maybe the system is designed for people who only have a few dozen bookmarks and just re-Google everything else all the time. If one of the developers had this issue, I'm sure it would be a top priority (and would have been fixed before it was out of beta). The Firefox 3 bookmarking system really doesn't work with any significant amount of bookmarks. It feels like I'm back in the stone ages of web browsing.

Yeah biriss is right,
[Troll on]
might be part of the Mozilla / Google agreement:
- Add bookmark so crappy tiny it's far from being a pleasure to add a bookmark to a sub folder (beginners)
- Any action on one's 1000+ bookmarks beeing so slooow that it kindof encourages not to use (categorize, clean...) their bookmarks too often (powerusers)
- Tag system beeing publicized, but slowin down the whole stuff with 1000+ bookmarks
- bookmarks file not beeing called bookmarks any more (and scattered into 2 files)
So one incidently ends up having a profile without bookmarks just for the pleasure of having a fast brower --at least. ...And googling to find its favorite website :!:
[/Troll off]
Sorry about trolling a bit, but Eh !
Will see how FF 1.5 handle this bookmarks issues :wink:
Firefox/-dev/Palemoon & ex-Opera fan - Arch Linux, Android, Windows phone - RAID-lvm Core i3, Atom systems
"Anyone who slaps a 'this page is best viewed with Browser X' label on a Web page appears to be yearning for the bad old days, be4 the Web..." - Tim Berners-Lee, July 1996
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tuk0z
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Re: Sort-by-name slow to work..

Post by tuk0z »

Well, FF 3.5b5 with arround 6000 bookmarks does a much better job with bookmarks than FF 3:
- editing a bookmark is over 50 times faster
- deleting one ~3 times faster
- haven't yet tried to move whole bookmarks directories
Still, Hallelujah :)
Firefox/-dev/Palemoon & ex-Opera fan - Arch Linux, Android, Windows phone - RAID-lvm Core i3, Atom systems
"Anyone who slaps a 'this page is best viewed with Browser X' label on a Web page appears to be yearning for the bad old days, be4 the Web..." - Tim Berners-Lee, July 1996
penlamp
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Re: Sort-by-name slow to work..

Post by penlamp »

I am using the latest Firefox 3 version available to me: 3.0.10 - That is according to "Check for Updates" in the help menu. Here are the latest results:

FF3 sidebar "Sort by Name" for a big bookmark folder takes 6 seconds. That is a great improvement. Opera browser is instant though. Plus Firefox 3 is confusing. One doesn't intuitively right-click the folder one wants sorted. One must right-click its parent folder. I don't have to do anything in Opera. I have set the default view in Opera to "Sort by Name", and so it sorts bookmarks and folders automatically whenever I create, rename, or move them in the sidebar.

Dragging a big FF3 bookmark folder to a different location is instant.

Copying a big FF3 bookmark folder and pasting the copy into another folder takes minutes. Deleting a big folder takes around 30 seconds. Opera is instant for both.

Does anybody know if Opera is also using a database like SQlite for its bookmarks? I think Opera code is free open-source software, and so maybe some programmers can figure out why it is faster than Firefox in some of these bookmark functions. The Opera bookmark backup extension is .adr
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Bluefang
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Re: Sort-by-name slow to work..

Post by Bluefang »

Opera is not open source.

Have you tried using the Firefox 3.5 beta? There have been lots of speed improvements. Deleting 1000+ history items only takes a couple of seconds.
There have always been ghosts in the machine... random segments of code that have grouped together to form unexpected protocols. Unanticipated, these free radicals engender questions of free will, creativity, and even the nature of what we might call the soul...
penlamp
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Re: Sort-by-name slow to work..

Post by penlamp »

OK. I just installed 3.5b4 (the latest beta version). I imported my Opera bookmarks (from Opera's html file backup). The html file was almost 7 megabytes. :)

One MAJOR improvement I noticed right away is that Firefox (with all my many bookmarks) launches immediately on clicking the quick launch button. Before it took up to a minute if bookmarks were installed. Before it launched immediately only if there were no bookmarks installed.

This was one of the main reasons I stopped using Firefox much. This improvement is fantastic.

I tried to delete a copy of the same bookmark folder as in my previous message (my big "Firefox" bookmarks folder). It took around 30 seconds, same as before. But I had to click "continue" in order to finish, after getting this message: "A script on this page may be busy, or it may have stopped responding. You can stop the script now, or you can continue to see if the script will complete. Script: file:///C:/Program%20Files/Mozilla%20Firefox%203.5%20Beta%204/components/nsPlacesDBFlush.js:192"

Copying and pasting the same big bookmarks folder to a new location took around 2 minutes. Got the same script message. I had to click "continue" every 20-25 seconds until it finished. I could hear the hard drive working the whole time. Since I rarely delete or copy big folders, that slowness is not a big problem for me.

"Sort by Name" though of that folder was instant! Woo hoo! One only has to remember to right-click the PARENT folder in the sidebar bookmarks (Click Ctrl-b to get to the sidebar bookmarks, or click the bookmarks icon if you have dragged it to the top of the browser). I can see both individual bookmarks and folders in the sidebar, and both are sorted alphabetically.

Copying, pasting, and deleting of a small folder with only one item in it was instant.

Naming, renaming, and dragging folders around is instant! Folders of any size.

Firefox is back for me!!!! :mrgreen: =D>

It would be nice if Firefox could get Opera's method of opening the bookmarks sidebar. In Opera one just clicks the mouse anywhere against the left side of the screen. It is addictive and faster than any other method I have seen. I will miss it. But I need Firefox's better spell checker, and I prefer how the results from site searches with the Google toolbar in Firefox can be set to open in a new tab.

I installed SortPlaces (see: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9275) in order not to have to sort by name manually. It works great on this beta Firefox browser. It sorts all folders at all levels with one click, and it does it in a few seconds.
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the-edmeister
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Re: Sort-by-name slow to work..

Post by the-edmeister »

It would be nice if Firefox could get Opera's method of opening the bookmarks sidebar. In Opera one just clicks the mouse anywhere against the left side of the screen.

Sidebar Autohide - you don't click near the Sidebar, it uses cursor proximity to the Sidebar.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6524

Don't know if it works in the 3.5beta's, too "busy" for my taste, so I haven't tried it - I was having the Sidebar open too often when I didn't want it to open with 3.0 versions.


Ed
A mind is a terrible thing to waste. Mine has wandered off and I'm out looking for it.
penlamp
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Re: Sort-by-name slow to work..

Post by penlamp »

Thanks. I bookmarked it. Unfortunately, it says "This add-on is for older versions of Firefox." I am looking at the page from the beta Firefox 3.5x browser.

I think it would drive me nuts if the sidebar bookmarks opened any time I happened to bump into the left side of the screen. With Opera one has to also click on the left side of the screen in order to open or close the sidebar. What is beautiful about Opera's method is that I don't have to aim at an icon.
penlamp
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Re: Sort-by-name slow to work..

Post by penlamp »

As previously discussed, SortPlaces, an addon, https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9275 , sorts all bookmarks in a few seconds. In the last few weeks it stopped working for me. I use Firefox 3.5.

The June 20, 2009 update or later solves the problem. Currently, one has to go to the SortPlaces home site to get that update:
http://www.andyhalford.com/sortplaces/index.html
http://www.andyhalford.com/sortplaces/download.html

Before the update was installed I waited almost an hour for SortPlaces to work, and it never finished. After the June 20, 2009 update was installed it sorted all my bookmarks in a few seconds.
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