Scrolling explanation please

[timothius]

Hi All,

I was browsing Wolfram Alpha today and noticed that scrolling is horribly slow in firefox.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/

I'm on Ubuntu Intrepid running on a Dell M1330 with an 8400Gs.

Scrolling the same site is smoother when using an Windows Xp virtual machine and internet explorer 8!

I'm just wondering why scrolling in Linux is so terrible in general. Is it a driver issue or an Xorg issue?

Thanks,

T

[thefirstm]

Same issue here with an 8600m GT and 185.18.10. All other sites scroll just fine, though. In fact, they scroll very fast.

[hyfans]

you mean this page?

http://www.wolframalpha.com/examples/Math.html

i has NO scrolling problem here, its scrolling is even faster than nvnews( in this post).

[hyfans]

debian/sid+185.18.10+no composite+swiftfox 3.0.11Pre+amdx2 3200+8500GT

[clarious]

Originally Posted by hyfans

you mean this page?

http://www.wolframalpha.com/examples/Math.html

i has NO scrolling problem here, its scrolling is even faster than nvnews( in this post).

No, the front page.
I also has the same problem with 8600M + 180.18.10, will test with 6600 when I get home.

It is due to the frame in the middle, I am not an expert in this matter but maybe the reason is too many small picture?

[thefirstm]

It looks to me like the page is trying to do some sort of compositing or transparency. This is probably what is slowing it down.

[clarious]

Tested with 6600GT: Smooth as silk. Looking at your card, I think this is the same performance bug of 8000 series (and above?)

[apaige]

Scrolling on this page (which has a fixed background) used to be very slow on the 8xxx cards; recent drivers fixed that problem.

Now the Wolfram|Alpha result pages are very slow. I guess something on them isn't handled by the driver. Then again, before blaming NVIDIA, I'd like to know why the hell every piece of textual content is presented as a freakin' image, and why displaying any result at all requires javascript to be enabled.

[hyfans]

apaige, i tried the Wolfram's page as well as the tuxfamily page you mentioned above again.

i still have SMOOTH scrolling on them

btw, maybe because i have fix background workaround in my usercontent.css?

/* Smooth Scrolling Workaround: Disable Fixed Background Images on Pages */
body {
background-attachment: scroll !important;
}

[apaige]

Originally Posted by hyfans

i still have SMOOTH scrolling on them
btw, maybe because i have fix background workaround in my usercontent.css?

Yup, that's why.

[ledoc]

Wow that wolfram page is real slow (G84/180.44). And, I get hissing noises from my board/GPU. yikes.