Slowness on redraw

Help & Support
#1

Dopus 9 is quite visibly slower in its redraw operations than 8, on a slower CPU this is not only very noticable it is also visibly slower having to redraw the list multiple times (and using quite a bit of CPU in the process)

Is this a known issue and if so when is it due to get fixed. I don't mind some of the new functionality in 9, but right now it doesn't perform as well as 8 did for the simple things like displaying a directory listing. I am interested to know if I am the only person experiencing this...

#2

You are not alone, it seems.

[resource.dopus.com/t/increase-speed/4043/1)

#3

Kaminari,
I do not have an issue with the buttons taking a long time to draw so what I am describing is slightly different to the poor person that was so lovingly flayed for expressing his opinion

I am noticing the lister contents being redrawn more often than would seem optimal and that appears to the be (but probably isn't the entire) cause of the extra slowness that I am seeing

After reading a few other threads I noticed that turning off smooth scroll had been recommended on occasion and I did find that this did make it noticably better. I am not sure how "smooth scroll" applies when the list box is being filled (ie: when nothing is being scrolled) but there may be some scope for some optimisations in that area

#4

When does it happen and what does the redrawing look like? Does the window get erased and then redrawn or are you seeing something else? If the window is being painted over itself without being erased then you wouldn't be able to see it, so I'm not sure what I should be looking out for.

Is it changing because files in the directory are changing and their information needs to be updated, or something else?

#5

As these things tend to do... when I went back to replicate the behaviour again (just now) I found that it had stopped. This was a result of some option changes I made just after my post...

If I have "Reset focus entry when sorting file list" not ticked (which I did previously) then when I change the sort order the behaviour I am describing still happens. I see the listbox being populated with many entries and the "redraw" effect that I was describing. Unfortunately I am not seeing it now on entering a directory, but I can recreate it at will by unticking "Reset focus entry when sorting file list" and changing the sort order in a lister and make it go away again by ticking that same option

As luck would have it "smooth scrolling" actually makes no difference at all to the problem I was describing

#6

Could you describe what the "redrawing effect" looks like? I still don't know what to look for.

#7

As it fills the listbox it draws the listbox contents multiple times and you can see the scrollbar moving, almost like the programmers forgot to turn off the 'draw' flag whilst they were populating the listbox again with the data in a different order

Another thing that is annoying about 9, related in one way is that when I rename a file interactively after I hit return the old name is still being displayed. It stays this way until I do an F5 to refresh. Previously I saw the listbox being filled multiple times as it filled it with the sorted contents (this is one of the reasons that I saw it semi-frequently, enough to be annoying)

To see it fairly easily, get yourself a folder, put say 500 or so files in it, make sure you have the reset focus option unticked, change the sort order
Similarly for the rename issue, click on a file change the name to something unique then hit enter; I see the old filename again, if I attempt to change it again (file not found as you might expect). Hit F5 to refresh, watch the listbox draw and then "jump" to where your selection is again

If that isn't enough for you maybe I'll make a video of it

#8

Opus does not use a listbox, and it does not 'populate' anything. It uses a custom listview control that renders the internal linked list of entries directly. So I don't know what you are seeing but it's not the list being populated.

The only time you would ever see the effect of the list being populated (with the scroll bar gradually shrinking) is when reading a folder in Flat View - in this instance, the primary folder already exists in the list, and so Opus adds the child entries to the existing list and updates the scrollbar progressively to give a sense that something is happening. When reading a normal folder in non-FlatView mode, the display and scrollbar are just simply not updated at all until the folder is read.

The effect you describe when re-sorting the file list is most definitely caused by the new 'smooth scrolling' option. This is designed to take no longer than 500ms to perform any given scrolling action, but if you find even this small delay annoying, just turn it off and Opus will behave exactly as it did previously.

#9

I guess I will have to make a video of it then seeing as I did what I described in the post above and saw some delays that as yet have not been explained

#10

It might be worth turning on the file change debug setting mentioned in this FAQ as it sounds like one or two of the problems could be related to file changes that either aren't detected or that are being lost in an unusually large flood of other changes. It might be something else but I think it's worth a quick try.

#11

ok, I will have a look at that as well - thanks
I will have to get something to do screen recording, do you have any favourites ?

#12

I use TechSmith Camtasia Studio to make my videos; however, it is not cheap if you only want it for a one-off. (Maybe it has a demo mode though? I can't remember.)

There are some free video-making tools and some of them work okay but it's been a while since I tried them so I'm not sure which to recommend these days.

#13

I've noticed the same here... I submitted a ticket to support as I didn't know there was a Community forum, now I do.

[quote]I am having troubles locating how to refresh an opus page when moving files to another directory. In order to view the file that was just created to that directory I need to close out of Opus or use the back browser button, then open the directory to view the new contents of the directory.

I'm not able to find an option within Opus which enables/disables refresh.[/quote]

I use Opus with 6 other tabs open (wish there was a tab move/lock feature) and while copying files over to the next directory I'll switch over and will not see anything there, as if the screen has not redrawn itself, if I hit the back button or F5 REFRESH then the file will display. The same goes for redrawing while a file is displayed but the correct file size does not display while it's being copied over, you'll have to refresh the page to see the byte count.

#14

You can move tabs by dragging them (by the icons) and lock them by right-clicking them (on the icons) and selecting the lock options from the menu.

Please try the suggestions in the FAQ: Changes to folders are not being detected and let us know what you find.

#15

[quote="nudel"]
You can move tabs by dragging them (by the icons) and lock them by right-clicking them (on the icons) and selecting the lock options from the menu.

Wish that were true to the fact that Tabs stay in a permanent place, which do not. After locking you can still move there positions. (wasn't meant to hijack this thread on that topic :frowning: )

[quote]
Please try the suggestions in the FAQ: Changes to folders are not being detected and let us know what you find.[/quote][/quote]

Thanks for the link. I'll read through it and see what I can find out.

#16

Tab Locking refers to the folder shown in the tab, not the position of the tab itself. If you don't want your tabs to move, just don't move them? They won't jump around by themselves.