The Dino-Aspie Ex-Café (for Those 40+... or feeling creaky)

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The WP/Skype slowdown myth? (NB. I see Skype has eight million users online at the moment.)

This page (689)... Well. I was on page 688, with my CPU usage hovering around 20%, then I came on this page and watched Chuck's YouTube (excellent!) and blesedmom's YouTube (too dark to see any juggling), then I noticed that I had 100% CPU being used.

I closed this tab and another tab I had open to WP, but did nothing to the other 5 tabs (Wikipedia, ImageShack, Urban Dictionary, Salad Fingers, TLDP (The Linux Documentation Project), and I was back showing 20% CPU.

Opened a new tab to WP, for page 688 (no YouTube previews)... still 20%.

Moved forward to page 689 - 60% CPU.

Watched part of Chuck's video - up to 80%. Stayed there, even when the whole clip had been downloaded, so nothing to do with the internet connection, or any interference from Skype with that.

Watched part of blesedmom's video. CPU went up to 92%.

Used "back" to go back to page 688. CPU drpped to 20%

While I'm posting this, the CPU has gone back up to 60% (both videos are present in the "Topic Review" box below this.

Just clicked play on Chuck's video down there. CPU now 90%. Paused it, still 90%. Scrolled down so neither was actually visible in that box, and the usage is now 60%. Scrolled up to have Chuck's video visible, CPU goes back up to 80%.

All the above isn't totally consistent, but the broad pattern stays the same, and jumps in usage happen exactly at the point where the absence/presence/visibility of the YouTube previews are involved. Merely having YouTube previews visible on a page slugs your CPU. I my case, I've got a 1.6GHz P4, and it copes, most of the time. Anyone with a slower machine will have major problems. People with faster machines may not know what we're talking about.

I just scrolled those video previews out of sight , again, and the CPU usage shows 50%. As I say, this is not completely consistent, but the gross culprit seems to be the YouTube video preview.

While typing here, at this moment, the usage hovers around 60%.

(PS. Whilst looping around, many times, doing typo corrections to this post, I note that when on the "Your message has been entered successfully." page, the overall CPU usage drops to 10%)

I partially buried this window, for a while, to look at the detailed usage, and during that, the overall usage showed as 40%. The detail usage (on Linux, etc) is shown by a program called "top". My browser is Seamonkey. Xorg is the display manager. Compiz does the display compositing (pretties!). Skype uses 1.5% of my CPU time. This is the 30 second period capture:

Argh! And after all that.... blessedmon! Please put back the video!! !!

The aim of collecting all the above was to leave it on a page where other people might be able to check that the same happened to them.

You've changed the page, and made the whole thing different.

Wah!

In fact... now I'll try to fill up the page with tat, in order to keep the thing fairly easy to confirm.

I'll come back and delete this rubbish in a bit. If anyone else can confirm that things happen roughly as I describe about, I'll PM Alex a link to my message, to see if he can see any reason for it.

I did notice that if I come direct to this page, after editing my big message above, then the usage drops to 10%. If I then scroll up, the instant a YouTube preview copes into sight, the usage shoots up.

This is official kipper.

This is official kipper.

The above should have read "spam" instead of "kipper".

As this is AKA "The Spam and Kipper", all is well.

Sorry, I thought you meant they are causing problems and therefore shouldn't be posted.

Shall I find all the ones I posted links for, as well?

I never could bring myself to like kipper ties.

I therefore declare spam to be the winner.

Hey! Indulge me. I'm just being silly/sensible. My favourite pose.

Do the links to youtubes make a difference, Lau?

Links never cause a problem. (Even if you yourself are running any of the abysmal software that is sold to "speed up your internet", which operates by pre-fetching linked data. Although, even then, as it will not be running as an embedded application on your page, I doubt that that would be relevant).

What I seem to see applies only when at least some bit of a YouTube box, with its preview image, is visible on your screen. That might not be the same on IE or Opera, etc, as they might treat offscreen parts of the page differently. I think the Gecko engine (in Seamonkey, Firefox, and some others) must be being a little clever, and making no attempt to render any part of a page that is not on view, and hence not invoking the embedded code for the YouTube box at all.

Has anyone else had a chance to look into the above?
Is what I have described happening similarly, to them?
This links back to my main message.

(I think I should start removing all my spam?)