Right-Click Delay Hell

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mindbend

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Is it just me or do Right-Click menus take forever to kick in for many situations? I'm talking about say in the Finder right-clicking to add a label and it takes as long as five seconds for the menu to drop. The beachball keeps me company. Once it kicks in the first time, the Finder is then swift for all other attempts until I go work in another app for a while and come back. Same goes for other apps, like Safari. It's the exact same infuriating delay when right-clicking at first. It's across the board. All apps, Apple or otherwise. When I first launch them, it's the five second delay for any right-click activity. After the first one, then it's fine.

I've had this problem for over a year and thought I had it knocked with Panther, but I was mistaken. I think it may be related to some shareware or other app, but I can't quite track it down. I thought it was A Better Finder Renamer, which uses the right-click menu for action. But no, I didn't install ABFR on a new machine and I still get the delay. I then thought it might be Toast's option to "Toast it" from the Finder via right-click. This could still be possible, I havent' had a chance to test this theory. Same goes for Portfolio's option to add a file to a catalog via right-click in Finder.

For the record, I experience the exact same thing on three different machines, so it's not a fluke. My buddy claims he doesn't experience it, which may be true since he has a very different installation of apps.

So, is this normal? If so, why aren't more people complaining about it? It's really irritating. If it's not normal, does anyone else experience it? Any ideas on the source...control panel, shareware app, odd setting,etc.?

Thanks for any feedback.
 
It sounds like the contextual menu gets drawn just like a regular window, and the OS has to think for a moment before figuring out exactly how to draw it. Then it caches the image in RAM until either it's used again or something else replaces it. This is my own conjecture, of course, as I have no idea what's going on, but it makes sense, doesn't it?
 
It does indeed make sense. However, it should not be that unresponsive, mine is pretty much instant everytime......
 
Mine is slow, I have toast, stuffit, and the defaults. I find the contextual menu is slow in the Finder mostly, especially in a folder. I have not tried to eliminate toast or stuffit, or a fresh install. In fact the menu is slower on my G4 Desktop then my G4 iBook.
 
Ok, so there are people who do not see this delay at all. That's what I was wanting to find out mostly. There's got to be some app somehwere I'm installing that's causing this.

I'm going to install OS X on an external FW drive and install one app at a time until I figure this out.

There are some instances where I can accept a delay, such as when you go under the "Open With" level and sometimes there's a delay as it polls the computer for possible apps to use. But basic dropdowns should never have a delay.

Exodus, are you running Toast? If so, did you install the optional "Toast it" function which adds right-click Finder toasting?

Powermac, do you have Stuffit somehow applied in the right-click menu? Or just standard install?

Thanks!
 
I don't acctually have toast yet. What I have got installed are Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, Indesign, Suitcase 10.2 and the Macromedia MX studio apps running on a G4 733 with 512MB and OS 10.28.

Sorry I can't be of any help and good luck to ya!
 
I have had the same delay when I right click on a cd attempting to eject it. If I have the misfortune to select another option besides Eject (ie. scrolling down the list) I get that same annoying delay of at least 2-5 seconds and sometimes the "ball of death".

You aren't alone, sir! I wonder why this happens?
 
I have toast and stuffit expander(not deluxe), no stuffit menu items, but the "Toast It" menu item, and I don't get the delay.

Attached are all the apps and utilities that I have that don't cause any delay for me.
 

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I'm in OS 9 right now, and even I get a 1-3 second delay opening contextual menus. If I switch from Netscape to the Finder and right-click something, it pauses and gives me the watch for a second. Subsequent menus are instant. Odd...

I get delays all the time in OS X, though. One of the consequences of trying to run a modern operating system on 8 MB of VRAM.
 
I don't think the amount of VRAM has a lot to do with it. I had my G4 400 with the Rage 128 and it didn't have that happening.
 
I don't know what's causing it (yet), but I do know that the early incarnations of OS X did NOT have this right-click delay. I distinctly remember the problem coming out of nowhere a couple of releases back. I don't know if it's OS X to blame, or some shareware or other app or some setting somewhere or what. I think I might try tonight to do a top to bottom forensic analysis of this insane problem.

Can iBooks boot from an external FireWire drive? That's how I'm going to try it.

One more tiny rant since I just can't let it go...FIVE SECONDS to prep a contextual dropdown! WTF! And that's on DP 1GHZ G4s.
 
yep.
i got it on 10.2.8 ona 700Mhz emac with 384mb ram.
its bloody crap. its the same either control clicking with an apple mouse, right clicking with my trackball and even control clicking with my trackball. Ive installed/uninstalled my mouseworks driver tons of time but to no avail.
Maybe its just apple trying to push the one button concept a bit further.
or maybe not.
I jsut set up key xing and mouseworks with all sorts of shortcuts (my trackball has tons of spare buttons) and forgot about right clicking.

tommy
 
ziess, I thought you were on to something, but after a few more tests, I have the right-click delay regardless of whether I actually use the right button or the Control key.

I wonder if people would mind trying this little test...launch TextEdit (make sure it's closed first). Type some gibberish, then select it and right-click or Control-click the selected text. I get a delay of about 3.5 seconds with either method. Now if I then type another line of gibberish, select and right-click it, it's immediate on the dropdown menu. It's only when first using the app after being launched. To further prove this, I quit TextEdit over and over, relaunched and it ALWAYS gave me the delay at first. Then was fine. This goes for every other app as well.

Problem is that I don't know what to do with that informatin I've learned. The only good news is that it's very consistent and repeatable behavior, which will help with debugging..if there's anything to debug. We may just be out of luck until Apple optimizes that delay out of the OS.
 
I get no delay, with your textedit test, either first time or second time, quitting textedit and reopening, still no delay to right click on text.

iMac 500 SE, 10.3.2, 1024 MB

note: I have 7 line items on a right click menu, nothing in my system to create extra menu items

That delay could not come from the mouse driver, it would be purely from the contextual menu control, which should be a cache file somewhere.
 
Mindbend, I was wondering, do you have any utilities/haxies running that control Contextual Menus? Now, I don't have your problem, although I am running FruitMenu, which does control CM. The thing is, FM is the only app I use that has this ability; it can also modify hot keys and such. I've also got AliasMenu, which can modify hot keys, but doesn't touch CM. Now, FM has an interesting option:

•*Load All Contextual Menu Modules Early in the Application Startup - if checked, FruitMenu will pre-load all contextual menu plugins at the time an application starts up. This might be useful if you access contextual menus in a certain applications often and don't want a slight delay when accessing the contextual menu first time. Normally you will want to keep this option off.


My point is, perhaps you have one or more apps running that control CM, and they are not pre-loading, or: perhaps you have more than one app that is trying to control CM, and they are competing. Of course, there could just be some item in your CM that simply takes particularly long to load...

On a related note, I do experience delays when trying to click an insertion point into highlighted text in some apps, such as Safari and iTunes. Had the problem in earlier versions of OS X, then a later update of Jaguar fixed it, now it's back with a vengeance in Panther. Oh, well...
 
I don't have any haxies or utilities that specifically provide Contextual Menu control, though I do have a couple of third party utilities, lots of shareware (paid for) and loads of regular apps.

I am one inch closer to the problem. I have had the problem on three machines. All three had essentially the same application installations. I recently gave one of the machines to my work partner (you have to watch how you say "partner" these days). He did a complete hard drive wipe and reinstall. He does not have the problem. I just tested it with several apps. No problem. So clearly it is something I am installing and not OS X or the hardware.

Now comes the slow process of whittling down the culprits. I suppose we could print lists of installed apps using the sys profiler and then cross off same apps/utils and go from there...
 
I just spent quite a while reinstalling OS X and some applications one at a time in an effort to debug this right-click delay hell I speak of (it's as long as ten seconds on my lowly iMac!) At initial glance, it appears as though Extensis Portfolio is the lead suspect.

Here's my method (between each install I rebooted):

1. anther install from CD--Easy Install option
2. update to 10.3.2 (via software update)
3. most other updates (hard drive, ical, ipod, isync, itunes, Java, superdrive, QT, Safari, security)
4. iKey 1.0.6
5. Toast 6.0.3 (noticed 1/2 second delay after installation, but not bad)
6. Portfolio 6.1.2 then 6.1.3 updater THREE SECOND DELAY NOTICED!!!

I am now going to do yet another complete hard drive wipe and reinstall of Panther and then ONLY install Portfolio and see what happens. I have already sent Extensis a note on this.
 
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