rated:
posted: Aug. 19, 2008 @ 9:03a
The test system: Dell Inspiron 9100, Windows XP SP3 w/all patches, IE7 and FF3 installed, !AV !anti-spyware !Windows Defender
If I set "Topics Per Page" and "Messages Per Topic" in my FW account preferences to 100, I do see a half-second to one full second delay in IE7 between the time the "Done" appears in the lower left corner of the browser and the page fully rendering. I do not notice any delay at all if I lower the previously mentioned preferences to 20 or 50.
FF3 shows behavior similar to IE7 with the preferences set to 100, but doesn't take as long as IE7 to render the page. FF3 also tends to render the page all at once on the laptop, vs IE7 rendering part of the page and hanging until the rest of the page renders.
Any AV or other malware scanning that takes place on your system will also add to the page render time, regardless of the browser. Different scanning packages will impact performance in different ways as well. I tested without malware scanning on this laptop so I could see the differences in the browsers, and to reproduce the problem without third-party interference. I wouldn't recommend surfing the 'net without some kind of protection!
The only recommendation I can make for slowness in the browser after you see the "Done" displayed is to lower the number of Topics or Messages to display in your preferences. The default is 20 for both settings, and depending on the software and hardware configuration of your system, you may need to tweak the numbers higher or lower to achieve the performance you desire.