How to trace what make vivaldi laggy (interface problem) and help devs to fix it?

desperand

Long story short: Vivaldi interfaces laggy, slow, noticeable delays when doing different stuff while browsing the web.

About what do I talk about:

Laggy tab opening, closing, moving, etc actions with the tab - animations. What means laggy? That means animation has delays, and micro-freezes and lags, and not smooth as it must be.
When opening a tab, looks like some of the calls are not async at all, because some sort of animations starts to load after some big locked delay, then animations of the loading opening tab are okay.
Dozens of other micro-lags and delays when doing different interaction with the interface of the browser.

Please help me how to debug / trace/catch where is the problem for gathering proper information for devs for fixing this super annoying problem.

And yes, I do not have any problems related to chrome engine at all, all sites loading fast. Only web browser interface laggy, and it's annoying with a time.

rseiler

1.15? 2.0?

desperand

@rseiler I talk about official current version (2.0.1309.37 (Stable channel) (64-bit)
) But version does not mean anything, because the issue with the browser for very long time (for years for sure)

Ayespy

@desperand In that case, you need to describe laggy interface in more detail, as well as describing your hardware and platform and 3rd party security software. All of my installed versions of Vivaldi on all of my computers have essentially instant UI response. What is different about your system would be valuable to discover.

desperand

@ayespy said in How to trace what make vivaldi laggy (interface problem) and help devs to fix it?:

@desperand In that case, you need to describe laggy interface in more detail, as well as describing your hardware and platform and 3rd party security software. All of my installed versions of Vivaldi on all of my computers have essentially instant UI response. What is different about your system would be valuable to discover.

I love this point, very much.
If you or devs do not feel the issue - the issue does not exist. Cool.
If I don't see an Ocean, the ocean does not exist.

Please, I'm asking about tools how to trace and debug the issue, I do not ask to ask a question about hardware, antiviruses, etc, because this does not relate anyhow to the problem. I know, that you have a lot of users which does not understand a lot of things, and many of them have primitive issues because of something else, but please trust me, I'm not one of them. If I'm saying Vivaldi interface have issues with delays, and laggy animations and other issues, that means exactly this. Full forum of the reports from a lot of people like mine one, where CPU / ram / GPU is not related at all.

Again, please try to understand me correctly.
I need a tooling/instruction / etc how are you trace performance issues to test it on my side, and send a report to devs. Nothing more.

mib2berlin

@desperand
If nobody can verify any interface lagging it seams a combination of Vivaldi and your system. I work on 5 different systems Windows/Linux, Laptops, Desktop, Workstation without any lag.
How should anybody help you without any knowledge of your system or even Vivaldi version. There you can despair.

Cheers, mib

Catweazle

@desperand said in How to trace what make vivaldi laggy (interface problem) and help devs to fix it?:

@ayespy said in How to trace what make vivaldi laggy (interface problem) and help devs to fix it?:

@desperand In that case, you need to describe laggy interface in more detail, as well as describing your hardware and platform and 3rd party security software. All of my installed versions of Vivaldi on all of my computers have essentially instant UI response. What is different about your system would be valuable to discover.

I love this point, very much.
If you or devs do not feel the issue - the issue does not exist. Cool.
If I don't see an Ocean, the ocean does not exist.

Please, I'm asking about tools how to trace and debug the issue, I do not ask to ask a question about hardware, antiviruses, etc, because this does not relate anyhow to the problem. I know, that you have a lot of users which does not understand a lot of things, and many of them have primitive issues because of something else, but please trust me, I'm not one of them. If I'm saying Vivaldi interface have issues with delays, and laggy animations and other issues, that means exactly this. Full forum of the reports from a lot of people like mine one, where CPU / ram / GPU is not related at all.

Again, please try to understand me correctly.
I need a tooling/instruction / etc how are you trace performance issues to test it on my side, and send a report to devs. Nothing more.

As he said @ mib2berlin, without further specifications we can not reproduce this problem and look for the cause and also advise a specific tool .. For me everything works quickly and smoothly and this in a rather old laptop.
Empty the Vivaldi recycling bin
The list of downloads
Clean the cache, cookies and history
and delete old bookmarks that you no longer use.
These are the only points of Vivaldi that can slow it down in something, apart from some other extension that you are using (test it, stopping extensions one x one)
If it continue with this behavior, the cause should be looked for in the system, such as antivirus and malware programs that are working or even some malware or adware that you have gotten into. If stopping your AV, Vivaldi works well, the cause is the AV.
If not, make a scan with your AV and clean the system with Ccleaner or better Glary Utilities.

pafflick

@desperand said in How to trace what make vivaldi laggy (interface problem) and help devs to fix it?:

If you or devs do not feel the issue - the issue does not exist. Cool.

He said no such thing. Usually, other software (esp. security software) may cause the browser to slow down, so it's one of the basic questions we ask everyone, before we start to investigate the issue any further.

@desperand said in How to trace what make vivaldi laggy (interface problem) and help devs to fix it?:

I'm asking about tools how to trace and debug the issue

Alrighty then - if you insist to do this on your own, then no one here is to stop you. Start Vivaldi with -–flag-switches-begin --debug-packed-apps --silent-debugger-extension-api --flag-switches-end parameter, then click RMB on the tabs bar (or anywhere on the Vivaldi UI) and select "Inspect element" from the context menu. You'll be able to use the Dev tools on the browser itself. There is the "Performance" tab - and many others, you can fiddle with. Maybe you'll find something?

Nekomajin

I am on Win7 64 bit with Skylake i3, an SSD and 8 GB RAM. The OP is correct. Page loading is fine, but the UI is much more sluggish than it was in v1.15.

When I close a tab, the new tab button sliding animation has micro lags. Switching pages also has a small delay. And, I don't know if it's related or not, but when I leave full screen after watching a video, and I switch to a background tab, I can see the content of the window resizing for a moment.

Ayespy

@desperand I lack the technical expertise to help you with such tools. I run things down by a process of elimination as a rule. By knowing the environment, I might be able to point you to diagnostic METHODS to apply in that environment (try this, try that) whereby the cause of a problem could be surfaced even if the mechanisms behind the cause remain opaque.

I can only do what I can do. But you mis-characterize my meaning if you think I said "If I don't see it, it's not there." What I said, essentially, is "If I don't know the environment, I can't suggest where you might turn."

LonM

It's also helpful to start vivaldi with a fresh test profile.

Go to wherever vivaldi.exe is stored
Press and hold Shift, while right clicking
Select Open a command prompt / powershell window
type .\vivaldi.exe --user-data-dir=C:\Users\your-user-name\test

This can let you see if the problem is due to your system, or if there's something wrong with your profile, e.g. an extension.

You can also use the parameters mentioned above in this step by adding them as follows: .\vivaldi.exe --user-data-dir=C:\Users\your-user-name\test -–flag-switches-begin --debug-packed-apps --silent-debugger-extension-api --flag-switches-end

Once you're done, you can delete the newly created folder at C:\Users\your-user-name\test

rseiler

@nekomajin said in How to trace what make vivaldi laggy (interface problem) and help devs to fix it?:

I am on Win7 64 bit with Skylake i3, an SSD and 8 GB RAM. The OP is correct. Page loading is fine, but the UI is much more sluggish than it was in v1.15.

When I close a tab, the new tab button sliding animation has micro lags. Switching pages also has a small delay. And, I don't know if it's related or not, but when I leave full screen after watching a video, and I switch to a background tab, I can see the content of the window resizing for a moment.

Though note the OP said that the version doesn't matter: it's always been this way for him.

I had forgotten there were animations in Vivaldi, since I have that feature disabled. For testing, if you also disable animations, do you still see what you mentioned?

Nekomajin

@rseiler
It's better without animations.

Ayespy

Vivaldi contains an additional abstraction layer that introduces delay into the UI. On most modern hardware, the delay is undetectable by the human senses. It has been reduced generation over generation by polishing of Vivaldi code. It was quite noticeable in the first versions, even on spiffy hardware.

On my older hardware, stuff 10-13 years old, I can still see it. It is essentially the delay of painting the UI as a web page. On my newer hardware, it is not detectable by my aging synapses.

Browsers who build their UI out of native elements (which is everyone but Vivaldi) will have no such delay.

OP still has not defined delay/lag - so I can't tell if it's normal or abnormal. "Lag" to one person is "instant" to another (for instance, millions of people complain bitterly of a "white flash" upon loading a web page in various Chromium-based browsers including Vivaldi, and I can't tell what the hell they are talking about. To my senses, I have never seen it. Yet, to them, it is a crippling irritant.) "Lag" must be defined.

Lags can be introduced by GPU/driver problems, interference from 3rd party security software, system-wide UI customizing software and extensions - especially ones that work by manipulating the UI.

Without knowledge of the computing environment, we mods have no tools to help.

Nekomajin

@ayespy
I haven't change anything on my PC apart from updating Vivaldi. The lag was noticeable after the restart. I made a few reboots since then, but the problem is persistent.

I would not say it's a game changer for me, though. But I hope they can do something about it.

Ayespy

@nekomajin OK - I see you mention the tab sliding. There is something wrong there, though it's better than in recent internal test versions. I reported it, but will do so again. I am still seeing that. If a tab is deleted, it can be from a fraction of a second to several seconds before the next tab slides to replace it. Sometimes it's immediate, sometimes not. There should be no delay.

I don't watch full screen videos so I can't compare current performance to past performance.

I will have to keep an eye out for lag on switching pages.

Ayespy

@ayespy Environment matters. For instance:

"agrael 10 minutes ago
I had a terrible experience switching from fairly fast 1.15/1.16(ss) to 2.x, both stable and snapshot: incredibly choppy, 10+ second starts, mouse gesture and scrolling failures, noticeable slowdowns on 3+ tabs opened,... Restarts/clean installs did not help. I thought-it's OK, it will get polished eventually, as always-devs did a tremendous work. After one week of torture, it was so bad that it forced me to start digging deeper. I've discovered that all Vivaldi slowdowns/high CPU was actually caused by ZoneAlarm firewall process(vsmon). Reinstalling ZA firewall made Vivaldi v2.x fastest&smoothest version yet! Thanks V-team!!! Now, back to proper browsing... finally!"

desperand

The very important thing what devs can do for people to really increase the number of customers of Vivaldi is developing an addon / or some mini-utility to trace and capture whole profile like firefox do to analyze calls, etc things, and delays. Where even people without technical knowledge will have the ability to capture their performance metrics and send to devs, and devs can analyze and check what component provoke the issue and they will be able to fix it.

Asking about antivirus software, or cleaning profile is not a good thing to do, it will say totally nothing to moderators, etc, because the issue is not always related to hardware. Even if you will know my hardware, what else will you or I do? Nothing. Like: advice to update drivers, re-install windows, etc which in 99.999% of cases will not help to solve the issue.

The comment above by some guy is some point from where possible to start, and I really greatly appreciate it, because it's at least something from where to start.

Just example https://perf-html.io/, I reported to firefox around 6-7 bug reports, and almost all fixed (all related to performance) which were easily captured via tool by the link above, and sent to devs, which analyzed the problems, and now on nightly the bugs are fixed.

Looking ideally for something like that, but with flags, it will be good to check too. Thx again for really helpful responses. Love you guys

Ayespy

@desperand said in How to trace what make vivaldi laggy (interface problem) and help devs to fix it?:

what devs can do for people to really increase the number of customers of Vivaldi is developing an addon / or some mini-utility to trace and capture whole profile like firefox do to analyze calls, etc things, and delays. Where even people without technical knowledge will have the ability to capture their performance metrics and send to devs, and devs can analyze and check what component provoke the issue and they will be able to fix it.

You should submit this as a feature request. https://forum.vivaldi.net/category/113/feature-requests

pafflick

@desperand said in How to trace what make vivaldi laggy (interface problem) and help devs to fix it?:

The very important thing what devs can do for people to really increase the number of customers of Vivaldi is

You should know that many people say the same thing you just said there, but finish the sentence mentioning a feature they need the most at a given moment. Can you back it up with some hard data at least? Or is it just an opinion? Because I think it's the latter.

Of course, it would be great to have some sort of a benchmark tool (or whatever) to test the browser's performance, but there are literally hundreds of other requests, most of which are more important than having some testing utility tool. And the time & resources the developers have aren't unlimited. They have to focus on priorities first.

Anyway, I'm finding it hard to imagine anyone saying: "Well, I've chosen this browser because it has a built-in benchmark". I'm not opposing the idea of having one - I'm even supporting it. But the truth is, if the browser lacks other important features, then this tool won't be much of a help in attracting more people to Vivaldi...