displaying Tumblr in Firefox

[ratcreature]

Tumblr seems to freeze Firefox fairly often on my computer, e.g. I scroll down my dashboard and then suddenly the page (and all of Firefox actually, like I can't switch tabs) becomes unresponsive for a little while before scrolling resumes. At first I thought it might be some unfortunate side effect of XKit or an XKit extension, because the filtering that applies to my dashboard (like removing the sponsored stuff, and blocking some tags), and that used to slow things down on my old laptop sometimes, but this effect also happens sometimes when I have just a single Tumblr post open and scroll down that.

Do others have this problem? It is starting to really annoy me. It never happens on any other website besides Tumblr.

Comments

[neotoma]

Yes, I have similar troubles. I figured it was Tumblr's buggy code.

[ratcreature]

Urgh. Well, at least it's not just me, but seriously, what is wrong with these people that they can't make the most basic things like just displaying their page work.

[sholio]

It happens to me in Chrome, but it's not just Tumblr; I also have that problem on sites that are heavily laden with plugins and ads. Tumblr is one of the worst, though, and it freezes up my whole computer while it does whatever it's trying to do. For me, it goes along with not having restarted the computer in awhile. I never have that problem coming off a fresh reboot, but then it gets worse and worse.

[ratcreature]

Hmm, for me it also happens when I scroll through Tumblr (or try to anyway) right after I started my computer when I first check out my flist etc.

[beck_liz]

I switched from Chrome to Firefox for Tumblr last year because Chrome was having issues with it, and I've just switched back the other way because my Firefox was doing exactly what you describe. The one thing is that apparently Chrome is rolling out some sort of code that should make it faster, so I might get to stick with it.

I think Tumblr is a resource hog, especially when using Firefox, and probably also has buggy code. Sigh.

[ratcreature]

That is so ridiculous. How hard can it be to make a website that won't freeze normal computers? I mean, my laptop isn't super high end, but I just bought it last year, so it's not ancient. You shouldn't need a gaming setup to load a couple of pictures. I don't even have continuous scrolling enabled so it is a limited number of posts on my dash.

[vorpalgirl]

I have similar issues using Chrome on tumblr, though it usually doesn't completely crash, just starts to lag, particularly on the keyboard, when I'm trying to reblog something. There are times when it will take upwards of a full MINUTE for text to start appearing after I start typing, and I've taken to simply writing the text somewhere else, like Skype or Google Docs, and copying it over if it's that damn important to me. Literally no other site but tumblr causes my keyboard to lag like that, to the extent that if I switch windows and go elsewhere it's suddenly fine. Definitely tumblr causing the issues. (ETA: This does not happen every single time, but it happens frequently enough to be an annoyance)

Additionally, I find that while I've never bothered to use their mobile app, trying to view individual blogs on mobile is buggy as hell; if I'm trying to read a blog from its main page, or a long post from the individual post's page, it frequently freezes, reloads at random points for no damn reason, and very often crashes whatever browser my stupid Windows 8 Phone uses (which, I mean. It's crash-prone anyway but tumblr is especially bad at triggering it). It's particularly annoying from a blogging standpoint though because like, they literally do not give you the option to actually change your mobile tumblr theme to anything NOT buggy; there's a single theme it uses for mobile-only viewers, and it REQUIRES infinite scroll, which is no doubt part of what causes it to constantly reload and frequently freeze.

Yahoo! is surprised that tumblr was a poor purchase for the price they paid, but any given user could have seen this coming for at least a year, as the thing is so buggy and such a RAM hog I'm surprised as many of us have stuck with it as actually have. Honestly, if so many of my friends (especially fandom friends) weren't on there, I probably would have stopped bothering. They're lucky their user base is interesting enough to stay for, because it sure ain't the coding keeping us there. Someday there's going to be a mass exodus, the moment people start catching on that somebody built something "similar but way better". A few are already in the works (Pillowfort, Sho N Tell, etc), so it's only a matter of time, really.

[ratcreature]

As long as fandom won't move to instagram for pics... (I failed to namesquat there, because I didn't realize it wasn't all artsy hipster lunch photos, and that some people put their fanart there, so someone else has my pseud.)

[vorpalgirl]

Or Pinterest *shudder*

I'm rooting for Sho n Tell and Pillowfort, to be honest. Sho N Tell might be the one to watch on that front, as it LITERALLY has been promoted as a better future alternative to tumblr, including a lot of the same basic features but a lot of better add-ons (e.g. the ability to filter/help people filter based on content other than just NSFW, the ability to do posts in linked series instead of just individual ones, so you no longer have to rely on just tags to keep say, multi-chapter fic posts organized and accessible to the reader).

Sho N Tell seems to be particularly promoting themselves to artists, even going so far one point as to have a giveaway contest of a Wacom tablet for those who signed up and posted a piece of their visual art to the site. Which is why I say that those looking for fanart should maybe keep an eye on it in case it takes off. :)

[ratcreature]

Well, Pinterest is good for certain kinds of collating and collecting content, but nor really for posting things.

I'm always skeptical about sites that want to be a "better X" because more often than not they don't actually have a plan to cope with the scale of X, even if they have develop good features. It's really hard to scale, and there is a reason why fandom mostly explodes on social networking sites that are established.

[madripoor_rose]

Happens to me with whatever version of Internet Explorer came with Windows 8. One more reason to stay off tumblr.

[ratcreature]

The problem is that fandom content I want to see, like fanart and such, is being posted on Tumblr and not elsewhere. And there is some interesting meta. And some people post recs only there and on twitter these days, and I dislike twitter even more. Also for some reason people organize fests on Tumblr, and not art fests but for fic, which I find incomprehensible.

[madripoor_rose]

Yeah, sigh. Fandom's become much quieter on lj/dw. But I really cannot deal with tumblr at all, the freezing issues, the gif use, a lot of the culture.

[krait]

I hadn't noticed the Tumblr connection, but I've certainly been having a lot of (Not Responding) freeze-up moments lately... and I usually do visit Tumblr at least every other day. I bet the two things are related!

[calvinahobbes]

It used to happen to me in Safari as well, and I definitely think the site is a resource hog. It helped me a lot to switch off endless scrolling.

I don't think I've had the problem occur on a single page, though, but I mean some people's layouts are awful so it doesn't surprise me. /mobile is an option, maybe, if you like that layout. I don't know if there might be a script that could add that to urls automatically.

[ratcreature]

I already have endless scrolling disabled. :/

[lilacsigil]

This was the only thing I came to say! I am not having this problem since switching off endless scrolling.

[ratcreature]

I guess I could try disabling Xkit to reduce load, but imagining Tumblr without that extra tweaking gives me hives. Or try Chrome for Tumblr, but otherwise I only use Chrome for online banking (because my bank's website is weird in my Firefox and their tech support couldn't help, except telling me I ought to delete my entire profile and start over, and just no).

They ought to have a website that doesn't regularly freezes people's browser.

[auburn]

Ugh, yes, I have this exact problem with Tumblr and Firefox. The browser fades out and Firefox is not responding. It seems to get worse the farther I scroll down. I just chalked it up to my less than blazing fast connection. It certainly isn't the laptop, with is a high end gaming set up. Even if a resource hog shouldn't slow it down much.

Tumblr though, seems to work lazily at having crappy code and innovations that make it less and less responsive. Sigh. Why the hell am I on Tumblr anyway?

[ratcreature]

It becomes ever clearer that it doesn't properly work on any computer. I don't think it is the internet connection either. I mean, my DSL is not the fastest, but not that bad either (it's supposed to deliver a bit over 17Mbit/s, in practice it's often less but it ought to be enough to look at a bunch of pictures) and it doesn't seem to have any impact whether I'm downloading something in the background or not, and a few times this fade out thing happened to me not on my dash but as I was scrolling down as single post.

[astridv]

Yeah, happens to me too, both on the computer and with the mobile app. Maybe clunky code.

[ratcreature]

It seems to be a really common problem, regardless of the computer setup. You'd think they would try to fix their site, when not even fast computers with fast internet connections can reliably display their site. But apparently not. I find it extremely aggravating.

[astridv]

I can't wait for fandom to move on from tumblr.
Then again I've been saying that for three years and here we are.

[ratcreature]

It could be worse. Fandom could have decided to conduct itself entirely on facebook. Or instagram.