Internet Explorer 6 Script Timeline - javascript

I'm developing a fairly large page with several external javascript files. In IE6, the page hangs for a few seconds just as it's finished loading. I'm not (directly) asking for help debugging this problem, I'm only asking for help finding a tool to help debug this problem.
What I'm looking for is something similar to Chrome Developer Tools's "Timeline" tab. Something that will tell me the run time of my various external scripts (or functions, event handlers, whatever level of granularity is available).
I'd much prefer something that is free, but if that isn't available, I may be convinced to shell out some cash for a little extra quality.
Please keep in mind that I'm looking for tools that will work with Internet Explorer 6.

I think Dynatrace could be what you're looking for.
It's quite complex but integrates well with IE and gives you more data than you could ever use: Number of times functions get called, CPU usage per function, a step-by-step look at the DOM tree being built... It's pretty intense.
Godspeed.

Fiddler2 will work well for tracking all aspects of the load time... unfortunately no pretty timeline chart though.

Related

How do I use Glimpse to find out what is causing my ASP.NET MVC application to hang?

I have an ASP.NET MVC application that makes pretty heavy use of javascript and JQuery for both administrative functions as well as customer-facing functions. Recently I reorganized the administrative screens to be able to more cleanly fit administrative controls for some new features.
I tested using IE and Chrome and found that there was a slight, but acceptable hang in one of the busier pages. However, the main person who uses the admin pages uses Firefox and kept reporting an unacceptable hang. I finally checked it out and found that what hangs in Chrome and IE for 2-3 seconds hangs in Firefox for 10-12 seconds, which is no good.
Not knowing where to turn, I wound up installing Glimpse and got it configured and running just fine, but I'm still having trouble figuring out how to drill into it to find out what area of the page is causing trouble. All I can tell so far is that it is definitely something with how the client (Firefox) is rendering. To be clear, it happens on all browsers, but for some reason it is way more pronounced in Firefox.
Can someone please give me some pointers on how to get started on diagnosing the issue? I'm not married to the idea of using Glimpse, but it seems like a pretty decent tool from what I can tell.
Thanks for your help.
Based on what you're describing, the problem appears to be client side. With that said, Glimpse may not be as well-suited as using Firefox's own profiler.
SHIFT+F5 will bring up the web developer performance screen. From there, you can begin/end a performance analysis and gain more insight into what may be taking longer than expected.
It may also be worthwhile to look at the network tab and make sure assets are loading in a timely manner.
Keep in mind as well that add-ins could play into the latency. If the end-user has a setup that performs post-page processing (such as Greasemonkey scripts or (recalling an earlier add-in) a Skype plugin that used to transform phone numbers on the page to direct-dial links), that would also play a part in the performance. A good way to rule these out is to hold down SHIFT while starting up Firefox (effectively running it in Safe Mode), which would determine if it's Firefox itself or an add-in that's to blame.

javascript processing

Is there a way to check the resource usage with a javascript code?
Can i check RAM usage and cpu usage of the script?
Since there are various ways to do something, i might write the code using different methods, and save it in as 2 different files, and check which method is more optimized. Esp when i'm calling a function recursively.
This way, i'll get to learn which methods are better and what to use.
Anything like maybe an addon, or maybe a script to be added that does this. It would be much better if it shows function wise. I'm not sure if something like this exists.
On a note, with chrome inspector, i tried CPU profiling, but it seems to show me values according to time, and does not show the RAM/CPU usage.
There's no uniform cross-browser way to do this. You can get an overall sense of your javascript performance by using Chrome's Timeline tool. Switch between the Timelines and Memory tabs on the left and hit the record button at the bottom. I believe Safari has a similar tool.
Internet Explorer has the excellent DynaTrace tool, although I don't know it well enough to provide detailed instruction on how to use it.
Note that javascript interpreters vary wildly in implementation, so they may have very different performance characteristics. Rather than get caught up in the details of implementation (premature optimization is evil and all that), write your code with good coding practices in mind. That means that if you do have performance bottlenecks (which the profiling tools available will help you locate), you can refactor more readily.
I don't know any specific way to test the Ram and CPU stats of javascript. But I often user http://jsperf.com/ to see how two different functions perform.
Have you tried with Crome Tools > Task Manager in Chome Tools menu options? It shows the CPU and Memory Usage for each process running in the borwser (comprise chrome-extensions).

Profiling JavaScript without crashing your browser

So tried my hand at profiling some code and I figured the easiest way to do it (at least on Firefox) was to use either console's time/timeEnd or profile/profileEnd, and I tried both.
The problem I have is with the number of runs I can do before Firefox crashes on me. Now I won't paste the code here because it's typical benchmarking code (and it's very messy), but obviously the gist of it is that it runs functions (a test is represented with a function), logging their execution time for a certain number of runs.
Now with for example, 5e4 it sorta works but I don't think it's enough to spot (very) micro optimizations, but more than that, it crashes.
So how do you profile your JavaScript? Because this way, it's barely feasible.
When I used to profile my JavaScript code I used Chrome's profiler; the JavaScript Console in the developer view gives it, and it pretty much worked for me. Have you ever tried it?
I have tried profiling a page with a lot of scripting in Firebug on FF4 and the same in Chrome (last version). Firefox crashed within a second or two, Chrome didn't seem to have problems with it. Maybe you can find something on it in the Firebug issues list?
Although not a traditional code profiler, I recommend Google's Speed Tracer:
Using Speed Tracer you are able to get a better picture of where time is being spent in your application. This includes problems caused by JavaScript parsing and execution, layout, CSS style recalculation and selector matching, DOM event handling, network resource loading, timer fires, XMLHttpRequest callbacks, painting, and more.
I think the profiler in the JavaScript Debugger (aka Venkman) is quite good. The version currently on addons.mozilla.org is not compatible with Firefox 4, but the change necessary to make it work has been committed. See https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=614557 for details.
dynaTrace AJAX edition(free)- one more tool in your bag. Offers a little bit more detailed performance metrics, IMHO. They used to have it only for IE, but their new one supports FF too. Also see Steve Sounder's blog

Narrowing down JavaScript performance issues on a page using a lot of jQuery calls?

My pages seem to be reacting slow.
There is a lot of JavaScript (jQuery) code on the page. How can I narrow it down? What is taking so long?
The YSlow add-on is the best solution to know why your website is slow.
There are many issues which could be the reason for slowness.
Combining many jQuery to one could help you increasing your performance.
Also you can put the script at the bottom of your page and CSS at top.
If you use Firefox, you can install Firebug and use the profiler.
You can read more about it in Understanding Firebug profiler output, and there is a tutorial in Firebug Tutorial – Logging, Profiling and CommandLine (Part I).
If you use Internet Explorer, you can use dynaTrace Ajax edition.
Read more about it in A Step-by-Step Guide to dynaTrace Ajax Edition, available today for public download .
There's also a built-in profiler in Google Chrome that you can play around with.
Both these solutions will help you narrow down what JavaScript function calls are the most costly, and with repeated profilings you will be able to see the effect your changes has.
Using tools like these will not only make you a better programmer (if you take the lessons to heart, and avoid the same mistakes they point out in the future), they will also give you a new appreciation of what happens in your code, since you will get a behind-the-scenes glimpse you haven't seen before ;)
Also, if you don't know YSlow, like Wazzy is talking about - get to know it... maybe your problem isn't even slow JavaScript code :)

Some kind of task manager for JavaScript in Firefox 3?

Recently I have been having issues with Firefox 3 on Ubuntu Hardy Heron.
I will click on a link and it will hang for a while. I don't know if its a bug in Firefox 3 or a page running too much client side JavaScript, but I would like to try and debug it a bit.
So, my question is "is there a way to have some kind of process explorer, or task manager sort of thing for Firefox 3?"
I would like to be able to see what tabs are using what percent of my processor via the JavaScript on that page (or anything in the page that is causing CPU/memory usage).
Does anybody know of a plugin that does this, or something similar? Has anyone else done this kind of inspection another way?
I know about FireBug, but I can't imagine how I would use it to finger which tab is using a lot of resources.
Any suggestions or insights?
It's probably the awesome firefox3 fsync "bug", which is a giant pile of fail.
In summary
Firefox3 saves its bookmarks and history in an SQLite database
Every time you load a page it writes to this database several times
SQLite cares deeply that you don't lose your bookmarks, so each time it writes, instructs the kernel to flush it's database file to disk and ensure that it's fully written
Many variants of linux, when told to flush like that, flush EVERY FILE. This may take up to a minute or more if you have background tasks doing any kind of disk intensive stuff.
The kernel makes firefox wait while this flush happens, which locks up the UI.
So, my question is, is there a way to have some kind of process explorer, or task manager sort of thing for Firefox 3?
Because of the way Firefox is built this is not possible at the moment. But the new Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 and the just announced Google Chrome browser are heading in that direction, so I suppose Firefox will be heading there too.
Here is a post ( Google Chrome Process Manager ),by John Resig from Mozilla and jQuery fame on the subject.
There's a thorough discussion of this that explains all of the fsync related problems that affected pre-3.0 versions of FF. In general, I have not seen the behaviour since then either, and really it shouldn't be a problem at all if your system isn't also doing IO intensive tasks. Firebug/Venkman make for nice debuggers, but they would be painful for figuring out these kinds of problems for someone else's code, IMO.
I also wish that there was an easy way to look at CPU utilization in Firefox by tab, though, as I often find myself with FF eating 100% CPU, but no clue which part is causing the problem.
XUL Profiler is an awesome extension that can point out extensions and client side JS gone bananas CPU-wise. It does not work on a per-tab basis, but per-script (or so). You can normally relate those .js scripts to your tabs or extensions by hand.
It is also worth mentioning that Google Chrome has built-in a really good task manager that gives memory and CPU usage per tab, extension and plugin.
[XUL Profiler] is a Javascript profiler. It
shows elapsed time in each method as a
graph, as well as browser canvas zones
redraws to help track down consuming
CPU chunks of code.
Traces all JS calls and paint events
in XUL and pages context. Builds an
animation showing dynamically the
canvas zones being redrawn.
As of FF 3.6.10 it is not up to date in that it is not marked as compatible anymore. But it still works and you can override the incompatibility with the equally awesome MR Tech Toolkit extension.
There's no "process explorer" kind of tool for Firefox; but there's https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Archive/Mozilla/Venkman with profiling mode, which you could use to see the time spent by chrome (meaning non-content, that is not web-page) scripts.
From what I've read about it, DTrace might also be useful for this sort of thing, but it requires creating a custom build and possibly adding additional probes to the source. I haven't played with it myself yet.

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