Why does Safari have such a cow over animated gif's?

randycat99randycat99
Posted:
in Mac Software edited January 2014
That and shockwave presentations- as soon as you view a webpage with any of that stuff on it, and resource useage hits the roof. Then switch back to a more simple, all-text webpage, and resource useage goes back to minimal. Even webpages where you can scroll a bunch of smilies off-screen (like the post new reply windows here at AI), it makes a big difference. On-screen...sucking resources like Monica Lewinsky in a...(well, you get the point). Off screen...resource useage drops like a rock.



I just don't understand why animating itty-bitty gif's should require so much CPU (unless some API is still broken here in OSX land). I'm just saying that if showing animated smilies is on par to playing a cool fps game wrt hardware demands, something has got to be wrong, no?



I guess this is more of a rant, but I am curious to know if anyone else has noticed this and agrees that this could be pulled off with better finesse than it is now?



Also, I don't know how the other browsers that show animated gif's fair in this category. Maybe it is exactly the same? ...not just a Safari issue? What's the word?



EDIT: It appears that IE OSX has the same behavior. Anybody know about Netscape, Camino, etc?... Maybe some of this stuff is no longer getting 2D GPU acceleration? Did it ever? I just don't recall these things having such a heavy penalty in my web browsing travels of OS9 yore.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 13
    amorphamorph Posts: 7,112member
    If memory serves, It's due to a ludicrous inefficiency in KHTML. I can't remember whether Dave Hyatt's said he's fixed it or not, but I know that he's very much aware of the problem.



    There really isn't any excuse for it, so I hope the release that fixes it gets out soon. Hyatt's code tree seems to be months ahead of the formal releases.
  • Reply 2 of 13
    ic1maleic1male Posts: 121member
    This problem also occurs on my Firefox in Windows XP but only on the Macromedia stuff, I think. It seems OK with animated GIFs.
  • Reply 3 of 13
    badtzbadtz Posts: 949member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Amorph

    If memory serves, It's due to a ludicrous inefficiency in KHTML. I can't remember whether Dave Hyatt's said he's fixed it or not, but I know that he's very much aware of the problem.



    There really isn't any excuse for it, so I hope the release that fixes it gets out soon. Hyatt's code tree seems to be months ahead of the formal releases.



    is the animated gif problem tied in with the poor (high cpu hit) on shockwave pages?
  • Reply 4 of 13
    amorphamorph Posts: 7,112member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by badtz

    is the animated gif problem tied in with the poor (high cpu hit) on shockwave pages?



    I doubt it, but I could be wrong. The quote I read from Hyatt specifically concerned animated GiFs.



    I've heard that Flash runs like a dying sloth no matter what context it's launched in, so I imagine that's an implementation problem on Macromedia's part. Certainly, OS X should have no trouble at all flinging vectors around...
  • Reply 5 of 13
    placeboplacebo Posts: 5,767member
    My prob with GIFs in Safari is that they stop animating after 4 cycles.
  • Reply 6 of 13
    paulpaul Posts: 5,278member
    do you have pithhelmet installed?

    check your preferences...
  • Reply 7 of 13
    bigbluebigblue Posts: 341member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Amorph

    I've heard that Flash runs like a dying sloth no matter what context it's launched in, so I imagine that's an implementation problem on Macromedia's part. Certainly, OS X should have no trouble at all flinging vectors around...



    Macromedia is (was?) notorious for great, but poorly written software, especially on the Mac. The Flash Player has always been a good example. They have improved greatly in OSX now, but in the past Flash played choppy in any browser in 9/X while it was smooth on Windows.
  • Reply 8 of 13
    thorzdadthorzdad Posts: 50member
    Still, there is definitely something lacking in Safari (or OSX's) handling of some Flash content. Take for instance this website, which runs wonderfully using I.E. under OS9, but is nothing but a dead black hole using Safari. The OSX version of I.E. can manage to display the content (somewhat) but it's a shaky, buggy ordeal.
  • Reply 9 of 13
    amorphamorph Posts: 7,112member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Thorzdad

    Still, there is definitely something lacking in Safari (or OSX's) handling of some Flash content. Take for instance this website, which runs wonderfully using I.E. under OS9, but is nothing but a dead black hole using Safari. The OSX version of I.E. can manage to display the content (somewhat) but it's a shaky, buggy ordeal.



    There are a lot of variables there.



    It would be worth testing to see if the difference is that IE is punting the work to a Flash plugin while Safari is punting it to QuickTime (which has its own inbuilt Flash support).
  • Reply 10 of 13
    placeboplacebo Posts: 5,767member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Paul

    do you have pithhelmet installed?

    check your preferences...



    Yes, I do. I had disabled it, but I guess that didn't do it. THANK YOU.
  • Reply 11 of 13
    xoolxool Posts: 2,460member
    This thread got burried, but Safari maxing out one of my Dual G5's processors on AI's Post page still bugs me to no end. It lags the text entry field and I end up making errors I wouldn't elsewhere.



    If I had a smaller screen I wouldn't see 'em all and it would probably run slower, but smaller screens is not the solution.



    Apple, please fix this!



    Does anyone know if limiting the # of repeats will speed this up?
  • Reply 12 of 13
    randycat99randycat99 Posts: 1,919member
    FWIW, another ghetto solution could be to simply move the browser window such that the lower half where the animated smileys are is obscured off screen (or use short browser window sizes so you can easily scroll the smiley half off screen). Yeah, ridiculous, right? I hate the lag, too, btw (and if you happen to leave your laptop on a smiley ridden webpage, you may find it nearly liquefied from the heat generation when you get back- that kinda sucks when that happens...does APP cover that, perchance?). That's how I make the smaller screen a perk in this situation. So you can defer your smiley access for when you really need them, w/o ceasing their function outright...



    Makes you wonder- if you wanted to view that webpage of dancing hamsters in fullscreen glory, how many G5 TeraHz would you need to do it? ...or maybe this could be the impetus for how a G5 cluster is now a practical thing for the home user (to view more than 5 smileys onscreen w/o keyboard lag, of course)? ...or maybe some bright programmer could come up with an Altivec-enabled plugin for hardware smiley acceleration?
  • Reply 13 of 13
    paulpaul Posts: 5,278member
    use omniweb 5 http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omniweb/

    it has the latest webcore and you can turn of gif repeating so after 10 seconds the smilies stop and CPU usage drops back to 5% or so...
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