Slow Opera Anyone?

[scrimshawe]

scrimshawe last edited by

I have switched to Opera from Firefox several months ago. Its on my desktop and laptop... very satisfied. Around the time of the last major update, however, I have a strange behavior I haven't figured out. On my desktop, when I open Opera, every time, around two seconds after it starts-up, the program freezes for around 10+ seconds. I have tried disabling my extensions, checked and re-checked my settings and there seems nothing out-of-the-ordinary. I have also monitored my running processes for malware and run a complete scan with Kaspersky and Malware Bytes. This is pretty annoying. I didn't pay for all this speed to sit here like I own an old XT. I doubt the Opera upgrade has to anything to do with this, it just provides a time frame. I have never seen a browser go dormant like this. Any ideas out there??

[Deleted User]

Deleted User last edited by

Have you tried disabling plugins as well? (opera:plugins in addressbar).

[lem729]

lem729 last edited by

First, I'm not sure about the specifications on your computer. Opera 22, I believe demands a bit more than Opera 21 and 20.

These were some tests on Opera 17 against the other browsers, that might be interesting to you..

http://www.slideshare.net/MID_AS/browser-performance-tests

While the new Opera generally performed very well, both the New Opera and Chrome on startup did not perform that well. On many of the other tests, Opera 17 was stellar, and overall both Chrome and Opera came in the best of all the browsers tested. On some of the speed tests (page load time, non-cached, and from cache, Firefox very much lagged, while Opera excelled. Of course, Opera is now at version 22, but I'm passing this along because my sense is that on startup, as opposed to page turns and other aspects, Opera tested slower.

Now I'm not sure why the especially slower startup for you in Opera 22 (compared to Opera 21, or 20). And yours with that 10+ second freeze seems dawdling. That's why I mentioned at the beginning that Opera 22 requires more in computer resources. I do note myself that on certain days my browser starts up slower, other times quicker. Now on my computer, I have a lot of stuff starting up (too much :)), and sometimes, I click the Opera icon, before everything has loaded up. (On my Windows 7, I hide the desktop icons, so I don't see everything going on with the startup). When I do that, the Opera startup will seem slower. Also, if you have a lot on the speed dial, even if the browser is loading pages from cache, maybe that slows it a bit.

Normally, I don't worry much about the startup because after that the performance is quite fine, and I often leave my computer on for long stretches. (Solution, turn the computer on, go into the other room, to pour your coffee, mix in the milk and cream, and by the time your back, it's already set to go). Now once, I've started the computer in the morning, then if later in the day, I close Opera, when I open it again, it opens more quickly than that initial time, that is, around the time of, or closely following the boot-up of the computer.

Finally, on viruses and malware, they can sometimes escape detection, even with the best programs. I mean, if they catch 90 percent, then they miss 10 percent. That can be too much.

[A Former User]

A Former User last edited by

Was it just a version upgrade or have you changed its start-up settings? I suspect that if you're loading too many tabs at the time of start-up this effect may appear. Under some situations it doesn't matter how good your general hardware is if you're still loading things from a slow HDD.

Activate the option to delay the loading of background tabs (in the most cutting-edge version it's available by enabling the advanced settings at the bottom of the Settings page then check it in the Start-up section, or in opera://flags/#lazy-session-loading in the current and older versions).

Or perhaps you recently added lots of Speed Dial and/or Stash items? Opera loads all those thumbnails from the disk at start-up which can make things slow down a bit...

You might want to file a bug report. Include your e-mail and Opera might contact you to get more info about this issue and your computer, assist you on doing some debugging, etc, so if there's a bug it'll be fixed.

[scrimshawe]

scrimshawe last edited by

Thanks to all for taking the time to reply to my prior post. It's greatly appreciated. In answer to questions posed:

Dell Studio XLS, Win 8.1, Intel i7 860@2.8, Nvidia 9500, 8Gb, WDHD Green 1TB.

I have tried disabling plugins.

However in looking at the plugins as per viperafk's suggestion I found some that had been loaded by software I wasn't aware of and disabled the boogers.

lem729 scored the direct hit! I had minimized the "stash" months ago and forgotten that I was loading all those graphics. Moved all to bookmarks or deleted... problem solved.

Thanks again, guys!!

[scrimshawe]

scrimshawe last edited by

Opps! Rafaelluik was the source of the solution... but lem729 still deserves credit.

[A Former User]

A Former User last edited by

Nice! (Y)

[lem729]

lem729 last edited by

Ehhh, glad it worked out for you, scrimshawe. I'm a little confused myself on why Stash might be a drain, and not sure what you mean by "minimized the stash."

When you put something in Stash, is it just saving the link, which shouldn't be much of a drain. I mean, all the user really needs there is the link. Unless Stash is supposed to open the whole page (even without an internet connection. Since I always have an internet connection, I assumed, you got the page because of the link, and then the internet.

And is "Minimized Stash," a term of art, or just another way to say that you stored something in Stash? I'm not sure I understand why Stash is loading graphics. I was hoping it was just storing the link. Does one have to worry about how much one stores in Stash?

[A Former User]

A Former User last edited by

Stash doesn't store just the links... Like the Speed Dial it takes a screenshot (in a bigger resolution) and store it.

When you open the browser it loads all of them (or a big number, I never verified that myself). You can open the browser in the Speed Dial page and press Ctrl+Shift+I, observe the network/timeline tab, it'll show it loading all the thumbnails stored locally.

I think Opera Software must make the thumbnails loading mechanism to work differently (load on demand rather than all) in the future.

"Minimized" means he deleted lots of entries from it.

[lem729]

lem729 last edited by

Thanks Rafael. Hmmm, If a page is graphics heavy, methinks now one might perhaps not want to put it in Stash. Also, supposedly you can save sites infinitely in Stash. One person told me in a post that he had 1000 items there. But it seems like it would slow the loading of the browser in a way that would be bad. Now that I'm aware of this, I think Stash is good for pages that are mostly text. Otherwise, one has to proceed with caution. At least we know the sympton -- a slow load-up of the browser. So as long as the browser is loading okay for a person, all is well. If too slow, then the Stash is something to consider cutting back on.

I think it would have been better if Opera set up Stash so that all one saved there was the link. I'm not sure what the benefit of the browser's taking a "screenshot" of the page is.

[blackbird71]

blackbird71 last edited by

My memory's a little fuzzy on this, but it seems like in some of the early Blink development blogs (or MyOpera threads?), there were some Opera comments that the idea was to save sites-of-interest references via the snapshot concept, thereby doing away with some of the reckoned need for bookmarks and notes since the user would have a snapshot of what he was looking at when he saved it in Stash, rather than a collection of URLs and site notes. In that sense, it was conceptually of the same family of thought as Speed Dial, in that a graphics site representation was being saved, rather than merely links or text that referred to a site. The conceptual difference was the more "aliveness" of Speed Dial entries, whereas Stash was more of a reference collection.

It also seems like I remember reading that a "master" or integrated control mechanism was either being or to be explored by the devs to deal with Speed Dial, Stash, and bookmarks, which was one of the reasons offered as to why a stand-alone bookmarks manager might not necessarily appear.

Regardless, it does seem that adding a control to allow a user to load Stash data on demand would be a most useful improvement, although I can also see where it might impact a user with Stashed site slowness if he forgot that he had opted to not pre-load the Stash data. I do know that such a control would help the trouble-shooting process, if only to allow a user to test whether a slowness problem was Stash-related.

[A Former User]

A Former User last edited by

I think it would have been better if Opera set up Stash so that all one saved there was the link. I'm not sure what the benefit of the browser's taking a "screenshot" of the page is.
Are you suggesting that instead of loading the thumbnails from your disk's stash.db Opera should use your internet connection to load the thumbnails of the thousands of saved pages when you open it? Or am I crazy? XD

The thumbnails are there for quick recognition of previously saved pages, and also as a mean to "compare" pages without having to keep them open (e.g. http://www.operasoftware.com/press/releases/desktop/2013-12-05), which wouldn't work the best it could with the size of the thumbnails the Speed Dial stores.

If you don't want to waste time organizing bookmarks into folders and editing its titles and remembering them and would rather use the search field to quickly filter the stashed pages (where pages' text content is indexed) and define the screenshot size so you can see "oh that's the page I was on the other day, it's the one I'm looking for" that's the power of stash.
It seems to me that if you just want a list of page titles this is not the feature you're looking for.

The solution to the slow startup issue is simple. As I said the devs must make the loading of the screenshots on demand. When the browser starts it should load only the first page of Stash and Speed Dial items at most, the rest can be loaded after (as the user scrolls, or as items are fetched in a search being performed, or at least progressively slowly in the background).

[lem729]

lem729 last edited by

Just to clarify something. Surely, both in Stash and the Speed Dial, the link is also saved. Now in the Speed Dial, you have the thumbnail. It can look great, so it has an aesthetic use. But what's the use of the snapshot in Stash, when the link is also saved. You don't have the same pleasure in seeing the thumbnail. The only thing I can think of is that it may improve the search vehicle, since you're searching more than just the link title, but presumably part of the text from the snapshot. Beyond that, I don't see that it does anything.

I would get rid of the snapshot in Stash, and just save the link. It would be a vehicle you use for immediate storing of something that doesn't rise yet to the level of a bookmark -- pretty much what Stash is for anyway. I have no proble, with giving people an option of whether they want to load Stash if we keep the snapshots. But why keep them. It sounds like the snapshot is more trouble than it is worth.

[A Former User]

A Former User last edited by

Well I guess people will use Stash differently from one another. Attracted by the full text search some will care less about screenshots while others might find them essential so they don't have to remember the page titles.

But people shouldn't use it when a bookmark folder called "Temp" or something similar fits them better. ^^

[Deleted User]

Deleted User last edited by

That just happen to me when I turn on my computer and starts Opera and afterwards it opens quickly