IE8 tabs suddenly load slowly? | Tech Off

mVPstar
I'm white because I smelt an onion.

Strange...ever since yesterday afternoon, tabs in IE8 have started loading really slowly (unbelievably slow) for me. There is a 5-7 second delay after requesting a new tab be opened. The delay exists when I want to open a new window from a link, as well. I tried running without add-ons, but the problem still exists. Even deleted temp internet files...still there.

Online scan from Bit Defender picked up nothing.

Tracing the problem back to an event leaves me no clues: all I did yesterday was start my computer, visit a few websites (tabs were working fine at that point), used VWD, and then left my computer running for a good 4 hours (account locked) until I came back to it.

Any thoughts on why opening a new tab/new window would cause a delay now?

mVPstar
I'm white because I smelt an onion.

Reverted back to IE7 to see if it was an IE8 beta thing...

The problem exists in IE7 too!

stevo_
Human after all

In reply to mVPstar

#Jul 27th, 2008 @ 8:52 AM

By slow .. what, the tab takes awhile to open? or does the tab open and pause for considerable time before the request continues?

mVPstar
I'm white because I smelt an onion.

In reply to stevo_

#Jul 27th, 2008 @ 9:01 AM

The tab pops up in the tab area with the words "Connecting..." Delay for 5-7 seconds. Then the tab opens up. Does this both when opening a new tab (without a url) and when opening one from a link.

I've also noticed that it takes a long time before the homepage begins to load when starting IE7.

mVPstar
I'm white because I smelt an onion.

In reply to mVPstar

#Jul 27th, 2008 @ 9:28 AM

Hmm, I tried to run without add-ons, this time in IE7. Tabs loading speed is back to normal (well, there's still like a 2 sec delay, but it dropped so I assume it's as normal as I'll get).

I wonder why IE8 no add-ons mode showed no change.

Now to get to weeding out the faulty add-on.

mVPstar
I'm white because I smelt an onion.

In reply to mVPstar

#Jul 27th, 2008 @ 9:32 AM

Aha! I had a hunch that this add-on was the problem..

It was the Java add-on. Makes sense, I received a Java update recently (might have been yesterday morning, don't remember).

Disabling the "SSV Helper Class" and the "Sun Java Console" did the trick.

EDIT: Apparently, it's the SSV Helper Class that is the problem.
Funny how a year later it's still faulty.

CannotResolveSymbol
{insert caption here}

In reply to mVPstar

#Jul 27th, 2008 @ 9:37 AM

Hmm... this is actually one of the reasons I finally got fed up with IE and haven't gone back. Nice to fix it (not that IE can win me back at this point, unless they've got something really awesome coming with IE8).

The IE team itself is great (in the IE7 beta cycle, they were great about responding to bug reports and such, and even had a couple people who were regular visitors here), but I think that a lot of the real improvements that could happen with IE get lost in management and the effort to maintain backwards compatibility.

mVPstar
I'm white because I smelt an onion.

In reply to CannotResolveSymbol

#Jul 27th, 2008 @ 2:16 PM

CannotResolveSymbol said:
Hmm... this is actually one of the reasons I finally got fed up with IE and haven't gone back. Nice to fix it (not that IE can win me back at this point, unless they've got something really awesome coming with IE8).

What was one of the reasons?

Just to be clear, it was the java helper class add-on, which apparently does nothing significant, that caused the problem in the first place.

CannotResolveSymbol
{insert caption here}

In reply to mVPstar

#Jul 27th, 2008 @ 3:51 PM

Internet Explorer tabs loading slowly (showing "Connecting..." forever) was one of the reasons that I switched. I missed the previous thread about it, so I hadn't seen this fix before.

mVPstar
I'm white because I smelt an onion.

In reply to CannotResolveSymbol

#Jul 27th, 2008 @ 4:32 PM

Yeah. If it were like that all the time, everything slow and all, I would have switched to Firefox a long time ago as well. But it wasn't, and it had only just became slow yesterday, so I figured that it wasn't anything specifically wrong with IE (or at least IE7 as IE8 being a beta could have just been faulty).

Thus, I am still a happy IE7 user. Smiley

CannotResolveSymbol
{insert caption here}

In reply to mVPstar

#Jul 27th, 2008 @ 5:11 PM

What frustrates me is that, even with this add-on disabled, I still get a 1 second pause where the new tab says "Connecting" when I create a new tab. In Firefox and Opera, tab creation is instant-- IE should be the same way.

This has nothing to do with add-ons or anything-- I (and many other people) have seen this since the very first beta of IE7. It's got to be because of some architectural decision on the part of the IE team, and I don't see it getting any better in IE8, with it spawning a new process for each tab and everything (and there was no improvement in Beta 1).

Couple this with poor rendering and Javascript performance, a lack of certain basic end-user features, a disregard for web standards, and a poor extension system, and one might see why I've switched to Firefox and haven't looked back.

sludgepickle

In reply to mVPstar

#Jul 27th, 2008 @ 9:37 AM

NICE FIND! That was bugging the heck out of me.

10/29/09 - Turns out the SSV Helper Class isn't the main problem - for me anyway...although that contributes to a small part of the delay. I found that changing my new tab settings to open an about:blank tab ("a blank page" instead of the "new tab page" in dropdown) made the new tab open as fast as firefox.