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Why is Mac internet browsing so ssslllooowwwwwww

mtoddy said:
Can you please try this sample page and let me know how it runs in Camino? I've found Camino to be as slow as the others.
http://www.myspace.com/86225654
Click to expand...

i can tell you exactly what makes that myspace page slow.

it is the table transparancy. os x doesn't like it for some reason.

I used to have a slight touch of table transparency on mine, and boy it was like miserably slow. removed that line of code and bam i was back in business. ;)

EDIT: looks like someone already posted my above statement. lol sorry i was skimming ;)
 
browsing has always been slow on macs. even on OS 9 it was slow, even on camino and firefox it's slow! it fact the fastest browser i've ever used on a mac was mozila 4 on OS 9.

i think it has a lot to do with the "hinting" on the fonts in Safari. THe speed advantage from Camino i think has a lot to do with how it hints fonts.

also i dont think powerpc chips are as strong as x86 with tasks like that. i noticed that safari on intel is significantly faster than on ppc even g5's, but stilll not as fast as IE on windows.

windows has no font hinting so it renders text a lot faster. anyone defending safari being just as fast as IE on windows is on crack. safari is a tank compared to IE on windows.

i've got a single 1.8 g5 powermac that loads pages 3-5 times slower than my windows box at work. and we have a junker xp box with a 667mhz P3 that destroys my g5 on the web.

dont get me wrong, i think safari is a great browser and i love osx, but internet browsing on windows is definately snappier. apple REALLY needs to work on making safari faster.
 
mtoddy said:
Using Firefox on both systems, Firefox is virtually unusable on some of these pages on Mac. They fly on Windows.

Here's an example of one that is slow and makes the fans in my MacBook Pro start spinning:
http://www.myspace.com/86225654
Click to expand...

It flew on my Mac OS X machine. In fact, my parents' Sempron 3100+ machine with Firefox is quite a bit slower than my PowerBook.

Are you using the Universal Binary version of Firefox? What about the Universal Binary of Flash plug-in?
 
I too have a MacBook Pro, and I found the page impossible to load. I eventually gave up and closed it. Granted, my DS line is rather slow, and I am connecting wirelessly at long range through another computer, but still! I think that we may just need to wait for Apple to make significant changes to Safari, OS X, or whatever else may cause the slowdown.

My advice to you: leave My Space and never look back. It's deadly! Do something else with all the time you will save.
 
Abercrombieboy said:
It has to run in Rosetta because they have not released a univeral one yet. My guess is version 8 will be universal. Give it a try, it works pretty well on my Intel iMac see if it works on your MBP.
Click to expand...
did you try seamonkey 1.0.4? it should be pretty much same as NS7.2, while seamonkey 1.0.4 does has a Universal Binary.
Netscape 8 was out for a while, and its windows only, since its using Gecko/Trident double engine which requires IE.
 
yojitani said:
have you got something running that might be using some of your upload bandwidth? I find that even though browsing is downstream, if i'm running bittorrent (seeding) the whole experience is a crawl.
yt
Click to expand...

If that's the case your upload speed isn't properly adjusted. Check the Azureus Wiki under Good Settings... Assuming, of course, that you're using Azureus (you should be ;) ).
 
mtoddy said:
Using Firefox on both systems, Firefox is virtually unusable on some of these pages on Mac. They fly on Windows.

Here's an example of one that is slow and makes the fans in my MacBook Pro start spinning:
http://www.myspace.com/86225654
Click to expand...
Interesting. This page is horribly laggy in the shipping Safari.

But, it's quite acceptable in OmniWeb 5.5b2, which is using a more recent WebKit build. Safari again, running atop the nightly WebKit build, also shows decent response.

The good news is, it's not an inherent OS X problem.
 
telecomm said:
If that's the case your upload speed isn't properly adjusted. Check the Azureus Wiki under Good Settings... Assuming, of course, that you're using Azureus (you should be ;) ).
Click to expand...

I am. Cheers, I'll check it out!

yt
 
I did some testing too... I've got an 1GHz eMac and a 2,8GHz P4 Windows box sitting next to each other on my desk. The link above loaded instantly on the eMac using Safari 1.3 but took ages to load on the Windows machine using IE 6.0

- M
 
no any problem in seamonkey 1.1a, BonEcho 20060813, webkit 20080813. didn't try safari.
 
pianoman said:
safari is not a good browser. it does not load pages quickly and it freezes often. of course, this all comes from my experience with it.
Click to expand...

of course, that doesn't prove anything... safari is the fastest on my 8 or so OS X Macs...

The #1 cause of Mac internet slowness is incorrect DNS settings.
 
dpaanlka said:
of course, that doesn't prove anything... safari is the fastest on my 8 or so OS X Macs...

The #1 cause of Mac internet slowness is incorrect DNS settings.
Click to expand...

Who has access to their ISP's DNS? ;)
 
when i saw the title to this thread i thought, oh this guy is talking about myspace. and sure enough it came up in sentence 2.

anyway my girlfriend uses myspace and it runs like crap on my 1ghz PB. but then eveyrthing else runs fine, so i figure it to be a myspace problem. myspace doesn't strike me as the epitomy of programming. and like others said, too much worthless crap on every page.
 
dpaanlka said:
of course, that doesn't prove anything... safari is the fastest on my 8 or so OS X Macs...

The #1 cause of Mac internet slowness is incorrect DNS settings.
Click to expand...

Could you elaborate, I have my router set to obtain DNS automatically, and I have set the computer to use the same DNS that the router does, is this a problem? My internet works fine, but is a little sluggish at times.
 
todd2000 said:
Could you elaborate, I have my router set to obtain DNS automatically, and I have set the computer to use the same DNS that the router does, is this a problem? My internet works fine, but is a little sluggish at times.
Click to expand...

I've heard many times people complaining about slow internet, only to have it solved by them manually entering the following as their DNS servers:

4.2.2.1
4.2.2.2
4.2.2.3
4.2.2.4
4.2.2.5
4.2.2.6

Of course... MySpace still renders slow either way.
 
If anyone is even reading this far... the main cause of this is simply The Internet and popular websites - Such as myspace are made for Internet explorer. Really, thats all it is.

Safari Sucks in comparison to Internet explorer just due to the fact that IE is so widely used, and accepted.

My 2GHz Core Duo iMac, w/ 2GB Ram is slow on a few web pages... while my Old Trusty P3 600MHz 256MB Ram blows thru it... its just how say myspace is... its all garbage optimized for a windows platform. Its not that your Mac is slow, or browsing is slow. I accually find everything except for Myspace, ESPN.com, and anything Flash is much much faster on my Mac than Any PC.

So myspace sucks, Im used to it now... I know its not my Mac.
 
todd2000 said:
Could you elaborate, I have my router set to obtain DNS automatically, and I have set the computer to use the same DNS that the router does, is this a problem? My internet works fine, but is a little sluggish at times.
Click to expand...

Not a problem, but it can be faster if you tell it where to look. Depending on your ISP, you may be able to access this information through online help or else call tech support.
 
iBunny said:
If anyone is even reading this far... the main cause of this is simply The Internet and popular websites - Such as myspace are made for Internet explorer. Really, thats all it is.

Safari Sucks in comparison to Internet explorer just due to the fact that IE is so widely used, and accepted.
Click to expand...

I've not found that to be the case, at least with the present version of Safari. I don't spend very much time on Myspace, but Safari rarely has a problem with it. The problem with Myspace (and it effects both IE and Safari) are poorly maintained pages that contain links to 25 videos (and/or pic sites like photobucket) and half of them are based on long expired links. So the browser has to resolve those links, and load the rest of the working but nonetheless irritating links. (Five different music videos all playing at the same time on top of Flash music players also playing something different is not my idea of pleasant.) And for wmv-based stuff, Flip4Mac's still evolving web browser plugin may balk on some of it. Sometimes photobucket and other linked sites go down, and sometime Myspace itself starts having bandwidth/server problems. It's really not an issue with browsers per se, IE will choke on this stuff as well.

Some Myspace pages also make heavy use of scrolling marquee tags which can cause problems with mozilla-based browsers. With Camino, it's practically assured it will freeze if it comes across one. Firefox for some reason seems to be a little more tolerant of them, but there are still problems (like not being able to click through them). Luckily, there is this rather user-unfriendly fix from mozilla if you prefer to use those browsers and surf a lot on Myspace.

Scrolling marque tags do not appear to affect Safari, at least that I have ever come across.
 
I am not currently on a Mac right now, but I tested some pages on this PC (windows). It's the latest and greatest in PC standards.

Firefox hung up on many sites. Many never completed to load.
IE hung up on less sites than firefox, but it wasn't a pleasurable experience either.

Why is Myspace so popular? I have been curious as to why for a while now.
 
yarngrrl said:
Not a problem, but it can be faster if you tell it where to look. Depending on your ISP, you may be able to access this information through online help or else call tech support.
Click to expand...

I am telling it where to look my DNS Servers are set to

24.51.159.146
24.51.159.145

which are what my ISP assigned my Router, so I just set the computer to be the same. I might try those 4.2.2.1 etc... though. It's not really a problem just sometimes it's a little sluggish
 
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