[whatwg] HTML5 (including next generation additions still in development) - Mozilla Firefox (Not Responding)

[Ian Hickson]

On Wed, 7 Jul 2010, Garrett Smith wrote:
>
> This is about the fourth time I've said it here. Can the person in 
> charge of writing the slow and buggy ajvascript on the HTML 5 spec 
> please remove that?
> 
> The problem is that that whatwg page causes freezes and crashes [...]

That sounds like a bug in the browser. No page should cause such problems. 
I don't see such problems with the browsers I use to view the spec.


On Wed, 7 Jul 2010, Boris Zbarsky wrote:
>
> I'll just note that part of the reason it's a "stress test", apart from 
> the old Firefox issue, is that it tries to be clever and not hang the 
> browser.... which actually causes the browser to do a lot more work.  
> On my machine here, if the spec's script were not trying for the clever 
> thing, it would take about 1-2 seconds (with a completely hung browser 
> during that time) to do what it currently takes anywhere from 8 to 25 
> seconds to do, during which time the browser is largely unresponsive 
> anyway.

I've tried to tweak the scripts to not be quite as silly in the way they 
split up the work (in particular, now they won't split up the work if it's 
being done fast -- in browsers I tested, this reduced the problem just to 
the restyling being slow, in some cases taking a few seconds).


For the record, the spec isn't seriously intended to be a "stress test"; 
that is stresses browsers is merely a side-effect of it being a big 
document with lots of complicated scripts and styles. There are (slightly 
less useful) multipage versions of the specs available for people who 
prefer those; they are referenced at the top of the spec, and most links 
to the specs on the whatwg.org site point to those multipage versions.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'