Rendering question

bighairydog

bighairydog

tail-wagging member
OK, I'm confused. Loads of threads, e.g. one in this forum now about a wired article talk about slower or faster rendering of pages, and about how chimera renders so fast etc...

What I want to know, is what is this rendering thing? As I understand it, rendering is the process of turning downloaded HTML and images into a nice looking page. When I open locally stored pages, so the time lag is only due to rendering, it takes between 1/2 and 1 second for a complex HTML-heavy page like a macosx.com forum page, none of that 10 second crap that wired claim.

Either can someone point me to a page that takes 10 seconds to render, or is this rendering thing being confused with downloading time? I'm sure I've *never* had a page that took that long to render, has anybody else?

(BTW, I'm on a DP 800 G4, for the purposes of comparing your machine's speed to)

Bernie :o)
 
Rendering is formating the page's HTML into what we see as a page.

The only pages I've ever had problems with is very java intense sites or sites with huge image file sizes and non-standard HTML.... Other than that, just about every page renders within 2 seconds in Mozilla for me. What were they doing these tests on? An SE?
 
They say they're on an 800MHz new iMac, using "MacOS X's standard web browser" i.e. IE. However, I use MicroSloth IE as my default browser, and get no long rendering times.

Bernie :o)
 
I think we should all do speed tests of the more popular sites in all of the OS X browsers and send in our results to the Editor. There is something majorly flawed in their tests. Maybe they were using a 56k to AOL? :confused:
 
IE is pretty slow compared to chimera and mozilla, but it isn't *that* slow. I think this guy probably tested it on a original imac with hardly any ram and a 56k connection. Ignore the FUD. Mac browsers are generally a little slower, but I think that is only because they haven't been optimized as much, mozilla has been optimized thus its speed.
 
As mentioned above., rendering is the process of converting a large string (HTML) into viewable web page. Typically, pages with a lot of tables and embedded tables take longer to render.

This page: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/04/19/1243248&mode=thread&tid=179&threshold=0
took 13 seconds on my iceBook 500 under Mozilla RC1.

For comparison, IE took 58 seconds. Under each browser the CPU was pinned at 100%.

Chimera took 16 seconds.

Anyway, all of these times suck. IE on my 600mhz P3 running W2K takes three seconds or less. This speed problem is my main complaint against my mac.
 
Mozilla (0.9.9) on Linux screams.

That link took 4.145 seconds to render fully.

Pages for this site usualy take on the order of 1.6 seconds, and I have only had a few pages take longer than 10. Waits that long are usually due to images or object includes that time out.

I would be realy nice if we had a browser on OS X that could get these rendering times, but you know what, it doesn't really matter to me. I care more that it doesn't take too long, and that the page is readable and layed out correctly.
 
It toke me around 2 sec.

I'm with you Lord. If we could only get a browser that renderes all pages corretly then I would gladly sacrifice a little speed.
 
OK vanguard - this one's for you.

I'm curious:

Could you try opening that slashdot page you linked to and saving it as a web archive (default option) from IE, and then opening it in IE again, and telling us how long it takes to display properly.

I ask this because I want to know if it's your computer or your connection. You see, I have trouble believing a report of 13 seconds to render, just because my computer is so much faster than that. I'll believe it if it still takes 13 seconds opening from a web archive.

Ta

Bernie :o)
 
Vanguard's link:

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=...179&threshold=0

Took less than five seconds (counting to myself) both in IE and Mozilla 1.0.0, virtually iidentical rendering times in this example.

2-pop.com rendered in 5 secs in IE and 3 secs in Moz.

A few other tests showed virtually identical results. Does anyone have a really complicated site to try?


DP 1 gig G4, 1 gig RAM, Cable modem
 
I stored it locally but it didn't make much of a difference in the d/l speed. My cable modem regularly gets 2MB d/l speeds.

Also, the fact that it consumes 100% of the CPU implies that it's not a bandwidth issue.
 
Keep in mind they are comparing the rendering speeds of this 800mhz iMac to that of PCs, and I hate to tell you, on average, most PCs just render HTML faster, whether it be in IE, or in Netscape.

Back when OS 9 was our norm, I always attributed this to OS 9 having an inefficient memory scheme. But now that we are on OS X, that argument isn't valid anymore.

I've said this elsewhere, but I think the problem lies somewhere in between Microsoft's claim that it's the OS' fault, and with developers. Clearly, apps like Chimera/Navigator, Mozilla, iCab, and even OmniWeb, all render faster than IE. So it really pisses me off when the IE/Mac product manager blames everything on OS X immaturity.

However, even the fastest of OS X's current browsers (Chimera) isn't nearly as fast as IE 6 for Windows, running on PCs half the mhz of current Macs. Microsoft has clearly optimized their OS to render HTML quickly. Clearly, Apple has not.

Things are getting better, and with Microsoft targeting performance for the next IE revision, and Apple clearly embarrassed by OS X's performance in this area, I do believe we will see dramatic increases in speed very shortly (think Jaguar and IE 6).
 
I have a feeling Apple is probably feeling preasured now to rethink this in 10.2 now that they've got this bad press. Even though the tests may be flawed in the wired article, I'm sure Apple feels the need to improve. OS X is an entirely differnet OS than any other previous OS, and what Apple has done thus far is AMAZING. It's something no other Unix has been able to do - put a user friendly interface ontop of all the geekness and make it so the user never has to know it's there.

I think Apple deserves more credit than they are getting. It's true that some tasks may not be optimized fully, I believe the problem lies between the speed of OS X's video acceleration and in the way the software is coded.

Whatever it is, I'm sure it'll get fixed soon enough. For now, waiting an extra 2 seconds is not enough to make me jump ship and write an article for Wired! ;)
 
Originally posted by vanguard
I stored it locally but it didn't make much of a difference in the d/l speed...

Also, the fact that it consumes 100% of the CPU implies that it's not a bandwidth issue.
Click to expand...
Wow. I guess this at least proves one thing - that the Apple's claims about G4 chips and multiprocessing were well founded. My G4 800 DP Takes 2.5 seconds on that page, and in the computing world, a 500 percent + speed increase is pretty danm good...

Bernie :o)
 
When you buy a low end PC it runs the current software offerings quickly but it becomes obsolete sooner.

When I bought my iBook I made the assumption that it would run current software too. I've been pretty dissapointed so far. I love the OS, I love the bright screen, I like a lot of things about this machine. However, it is too slow and as a G3 owner I find that I was fooled into buying an already obsolete machine.

It's not just html rendering, MS Office is too slow too. Anyway, next time I'm getting a G4.

Vanguard

PS For those of you thinking we should blame MS for writing slow software I would tell you that Office is bloatware on every platform. The G3 is a weak processor built for set top units, microwaves, PDAs, etc. As a computer's CPU it's pratically fraud compare itself to the x86 offerings.
 
Vanguard,
Are you running OS 9 or OS X?

OS 9 used to scream on my iBook 500 with only 128 MB of Ram. When I upgraded to X, I had to get 320 MB of ram and it's still sluggish. The current iBooks *can* be fast, but Apple just has to optomize OS X further for them. For now, I am very happy because the stability and ease of X makes up for the lack of speed. But with the current large X sales to the state of Maine and other school districts I'm sure the iBook will be the target of X optimizations.
 
I'm running OS X. I'm one of the many linux/unix/programmers/tech guys who gave apple a try because of their new OS.

I'm a little concerned that 10.2 won't be optimized for my iBook because it runs an older graphics chip and an older CPU. Apple might just stop trying to make this old stuff work.

Anyway, I guess time will tell. Next time I buy an Apple I'll be test driving it in the local Apple store first.

Vanguard
 
Originally posted by googolplex
What are you using your ibook for? I have an ibook 500 with 386 megs of RAM and its perfectly fine speed-wise.
Click to expand...

I use it for java coding, checking mail, MS Word, Fire (IM Client) and surfing the web.
 
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