Very slow and jerky scroll renders browser useless

Malcolm,

Thanks for your report.

Is this happening on all web pages of just a few? Do you have flash installed?

thanks

David

David

It happens on all pages whose length is more than a screen full in Firefox
2.0 that came with Ubuntu 6.10 (AMD64) . Flash is not installed. Problem
exists on both a HP ZV6000 laptop and a home built desktop AMD 64. If I pick
up the slider on the right hand side of the browser window and slide up and
down the scroll is a very slow one line at a time with screen refresh on
each move.

Ubuntu 6.06 LTS with Firefox 1.5.x works fine on both hardware. Scroll is
fast and refresh not a problem.

Problem has been reported before by anothe user, copy herewith:

   #1 3 Weeks Ago sadalmelik57
      5 Cups of Ubuntu
       Join Date: Nov 2005
      Beans: 21

Herky Jerky Firefox Scrolling

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm really annoyed by the way scrolling down or up occurs in Firefox 2.0
after the upgrade to Edgy Eft. I'm not certain if this is a result of the
mouse configuration (IfeelMouseMan 3-button with scroll wheel) or if this is
something about the new Firefox 2.0.

No matter what method I use to scroll up or down, I see a jerky line-by-line
movement of the page up or down. It is slow and looks terrible. I tried
Mozilla Web Browser and the effect seemed to be greatly reduced but still
evident.

I've tried to adjust the mouse using the user preferences in Ubuntu, and
I've changed the Advanced Preferences in Firefox for smooth scrolling and
autoscrolling. None of these had any affect. What else can I do to change
the scrolling to make it smooth and faster?

Malcolm

----- Original Message -----
From: "David Farning" <email address hidden>
To: <email address hidden>
Sent: Saturday, December 02, 2006 11:02 PM
Subject: [Bug 74116] Re: Very slow and jerky scroll renders browser useless

Malcolm,

Thanks for your report.

Is this happening on all web pages of just a few? Do you have flash
installed?

thanks

David

** Changed in: firefox (Ubuntu)
     Assignee: (unassigned) => David Farning
       Status: Unconfirmed => Needs Info

--
Very slow and jerky scroll renders browser useless
https://launchpad.net/bugs/74116

Is this still an issue for you? We are trying to trying sort out the older Mozilla issues and would like to know if this still happens.

I'm having the same issue in Feisty.

I'm a total newbee. I'm using the live version and also have that problem with Edgy.

Tested on this page (no flash) and YouTube (flash). The scrolling works fine on both pages for me. I think it happened before on some long pages, but rarely... Maybe it was fixed with the new version.

JBlock, does this happen with newer version of Firefox?

Is anyone still seeing this issue? if so can you please list all extensions/plugins/themes you have installed and the sit it happens on?

I have to say that the problem remains in Gutsy T5, Firefox 2.0.6,Opera 9...
I think it's related to the graphic card driver.
I'm using a Core 2 duo T7500 CPU, Nvidia 570M 256mb graphic card
I can only use nvidia driver 100.14.11 to make it work.
In the nvidia forum, a lot of guys report the same bug.
It seems it will happen when browsing a long and a lot of pictures web page.
It should be related the 2D render part in the driver.
So please help to test it and maybe we can ask for more people to submit reports to nvidia to fix the problem.
The following are some report posts in nvidia forum:
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=97629
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=96778
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=97434

I have the same problem, gutsy tribe 5, NVIDIA 8600gt, firefox 2.0.0.6. Not only happens with scrolling but also when changing tabs.

I'm seeing this problem when I have a div with a fixed position and content that is justified. When you scroll the justified text, the scroll is really choppy. When changed to left instead of justified, the text scrolls smoothly.

Attached is where I ran across this. Open the HTML and resize the window so that the page must scroll up/down. Notice that the scroll isn't smooth. Now change line 109 to 'text-align: left;'. Reload and scroll. It will be smoother. It may not be too apparent, but if you add images and more complexity, it will be visible.

I installed the firefox 3 alpha from the gutsy repository. The scrolling is completely smooth for both left and justified.

This is on gutsy from today, Radeon Mobility 9000, Firefox 2.0.0.6.

I have the same thing, Firefox 2.0.0.6, and setting to smooth scroll made things worse.

On Fri, Sep 28, 2007 at 08:26:56PM -0000, cmnorton wrote:
> I have the same thing, Firefox 2.0.0.6, and setting to smooth scroll
> made things worse.
>

try to opena terminal and do:

$ export MOZ_DISABLE_PANGO=1
$ firefox

does it help?

 - Alexander

It does not help me; Firefox remains slow. Switching tabs in Opera is also extremely slow, whereas it was snappy in Feisty before the dist-upgrade.

I'm on a T60 Thinkpad with 2G memory and am running KDE.

-Rob

When I disabled Pango with

$ export MOZ_DISABLE_PANGO=1
$ firefox

all my problems seems to be gone (on Gutsy). Thanks for that!

I also have this problem and it is getting to the point that it makes using the computer a daily annoyance.
It only happens on some sites, such as my photo site:
http://kcphoto.smugmug.com/

This also happens on sites with little or no images.

I have had this problem on both an AMD64 and Intel Dual core.
Nvidia 8800GTS 2gigs ram

Happens on Kubuntu Gutsy, Mint4, and Kubuntu 64

Disabling Pango worked!

Ubuntu 8.06/Firefox 3.0b5

jerky scrolling, useable, but extremely annoying. disabled smoothscroll, no change, disbaled pango, no change, opened FF2, works fine

Workaround, sort of - remove xserver-xgl (sudo apt-get remove xserver-xgl) Found this here under 'jerky scrolling' FF3 seems to suffer poor performance with that enabled, the downfall is you also lose compiz. The system could run FF2 and compiz just fine before the upgrade, so I'mwondering if it's just a problem with gecko and compiz. I'm going to reinstall xgl and disable Compiz and see if it helps.

definately compiz and ff3 together. with desktop effects set to minimal, it scrolls fine. System is an IBM Netvista 8035, 2gig of ram, radeon9800pro using the fglrx drivers. All other apps scroll fine, and all the effects work great, so I'm guessing it really is between gecko and compiz

I'm suffering the same problem, and I'm not using compiz. The slow scroll only occurs in certain pages like gmail, netvibes,... I think is a javascript related problem.

I can confirm this behavior on Ubuntu 8.x with Firefox 3.0b5.
For me, the slow scrolling seems to be limited to websites with a significant amount of CSS layout.

To test this, I have installed the Firefox Web Development Add-on which offers some tools to test out the CSS in a given page.

With CSS turned on normally, the scrolling is really slow and very jerky.
As soon as I disable all CSS parsing for the page, scrolling immediately improves to the way it should work. Smooth and fast.

Compiz/Xgl does not seem to affect anything, whether I use the lowest Appearance settings or anything else. Disabling Pango does not have any effect either,

The only improvement I get is by disabling CSS altogether.

As Jimt said, I have the same experience!

It's kind of sad, scrolling down a "lagging" page in FF3 with Nvidia 8800GTS on a dual quad core with 4gb ram.
Hope you solve this :)

Keep up the good work !

On Fri, Apr 25, 2008 at 07:00:57PM -0000, Delimandra wrote:
> definately compiz and ff3 together. with desktop effects set to
> minimal, it scrolls fine. System is an IBM Netvista 8035, 2gig of ram,
> radeon9800pro using the fglrx drivers. All other apps scroll fine, and
> all the effects work great, so I'm guessing it really is between gecko
> and compiz
>

this is an old bug that is unlikely related to compiz. please open a
new compiz bug for this.

 - Alexander

On Thu, May 01, 2008 at 05:13:40PM -0000, Jimt wrote:
> I can confirm this behavior on Ubuntu 8.x with Firefox 3.0b5.
> For me, the slow scrolling seems to be limited to websites with a significant amount of CSS layout.
>
> To test this, I have installed the Firefox Web Development Add-on which
> offers some tools to test out the CSS in a given page.
>
> With CSS turned on normally, the scrolling is really slow and very jerky.
> As soon as I disable all CSS parsing for the page, scrolling immediately improves to the way it should work. Smooth and fast.
>
> Compiz/Xgl does not seem to affect anything, whether I use the lowest
> Appearance settings or anything else. Disabling Pango does not have any
> effect either,
>
> The only improvement I get is by disabling CSS altogether.

please try to remove repeated backgrounds or special borders (dotted
and such) from CSS and see which causes your performance issues.

 affects ubuntu/firefox
 status wontfix

 affects ubuntu/firefox-3.0
 status incomplete

 - Alexander

confirm: slow scrolling on FF3 and thunderbird with compiz enabled>>> nvidia 8400gs / ubuntu hardy

just adding some data:

on the same hardware, the bug is present in ubuntu 7 and 8, I upgraded and did a clean install with the same results.

on Opensuse 10.3 the bug don't exists, my firefox is faster than on my windows setup

maybe the bug is in the Gnome? (I used KDE in suse)

I want to add that this issue might have something to do with the mouse scroller on some users.
When scrolling with the roller on the mouse, its all jerky, but when klicking and dragging on the sidebar, its all good.

So my "confirmation" shouldn't be in this thread.

I can prove that is not a mouse's problem. For me, it only happens in gmail. In the other webs, the scroll is smooth

I've just downloaded the firefox 3 RC1 and the problem doesn't appear.

I have FF3 on Kubuntu 8.04 64 bits and I am experiencing the problem on gmail.

On Sat, Jul 05, 2008 at 08:39:28PM -0000, Dif wrote:
> I have FF3 on Kubuntu 8.04 64 bits and I am experiencing the problem on
> gmail.
>

Your issue is tracked in Bug 217580 ... I am closing this "generic"
slow scroll bug as we should open separate ones for concrete
issues. FF3 has changed a lot over FF2 and keeping a generic bug for
all "slow rendering" open doesnt make much sense imo.

 affects ubuntu/firefox
 status invalid
 affects ubuntu/firefox-3.0
 status invalid
 affects ubuntu/xulrunner-1.9
 status invalid

 - Alexander

Is there ANY progress? I know it's not your fault guys, but this is not a tiny issue, this is huge as the whole internet experience is totally screwed!!

I am new to ubuntu. i have it on an old computer but it works fine. firefox 3.0 has been so bad I cannot use it. I tried to download a browser from sea monkey and had trouble. so i uninstalled everything related to compiz. not only does everything run faster but firefox now has smooth scrolling. absolutely wonderful. i don't know if this can work for every system but it fixed mine.
thanks for all the suggestions.

This solution worked for me fine!: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=614615