A web page is slowing down your browser

[iart]

For a couple days now, while only ebay pages are open, using Firefox, I've been getting this message:

"A web page is slowing down your browser. What would you like to do? Stop it (or) Wait"

Some ebay pages are taking a very long time to load.

Anyone else?

[*monkeyboi*]

This is happening to me on the Watch List page but not the Purchase History page. Sometimes the watch list will partially load and stop. The message about a web page slowing down my browser appears for a second, then the page starts loading again. It takes awhile for all of the thumbnail images to load after the page loads. They should already be in my browser cache though. I could show them how to correctly synchronize a backend cache with the user's browser cache, but no one is interested in what an over-the-hill developer with 20 years experience has to say.

[doortek]

Personally, I use Firefox because I grew weary of Google Chrome tracking me all over the Internet to then post ads they thought I wanted to see... I can block the ads, but I cannot block the tracking then sold or given away. And then there are the Chrome add-ons automatically included in start up every time you use Chrome... delete them from start up and they are added right back in the next time you use Chrome. That said, Chrome has the same issues as Firefox with the notice script on our end.

On topic, what seems to help with the script controlling the slider notices on the right side of the page is to hide all auctions outbid.  That still does not help the purchase page from taking forever to load if you are a large purchaser... you can set to 25 items per page, but the first page is still going to load all won and yet to be paid, invoiced items, etc., plus at least 25 items; easily over a 100 items most of the time. Every page after may or may not be far over 25 items, depending on the size of the invoices paid.

[doortek]

First, thank you for the response.. I don't participate here that often, so sorry for the delay. But first, we have most all notices in eBay settings turned off and they still continues to consume the right side of the page and still continues to send an enormous quantity of emails. That is not a navigator issue, but when eBay tries to send many notices each time you open any eBay page, let alone the purchase page, those pages all hang in conflict.

Actually, we set Flash by permission only. Granted, we set security a bit tight in comparison to many, but I have to agree that it is probably not Flash itself, but rather the script calling for notices that use Flash.

Firefox does not crash... if you don't click to wait when webpage is slow pops up, it still continues to load... but you cannot do anything else with that instance of browser until the page loads. Chrome has less of an issue and guessing because Google decides which ads you are going to see... and the notices act very much like ads. The problem with Chrome is that it does not behave very well and somehow justified because it is provided for free... and we know nothing is really free.

[berserkerplanet]

I unfortunately can't make heads or tails of what your complaint is.

Outbid notifications and such popping up? Video ads bogging down the browser? eBay scripts consuming large CPU on watchlist or similar pages?

Maybe start here: https://community.ebay.com/t5/My-Account/Annoting-Outbid-Pop-Ups-eBay-Screen/m-p/27921046/highlight/...

[keepplugging]

Using Firefox 58.0.2 64-bit.  Windows 7 Home Premium

This is not an eBay issue.

I get it on various pages, e.g. NY Times, Huffingtonpost, and on this page:

https://community.ebay.com/t5/forums/replypage/board-id/technicalissues-db/message-id/36352

That's the page for writing this reply.

There is no network traffic and no appreciable CPU when the message is up.

It feels like a program bug, perhaps an uninitialized variable or subscript overrun.

Or Firefox is using a clock timer with an excessive time-out.

(I clicked on Wait several times, and the message went away.  Then I could enter this note.)

[berserkerplanet]

Sounds like a runaway script issue.

I'd recommend getting Adblock Plus (or whatever variety it is now for FF58), and blocking some of the scripts that will appear in the "blockable items on current page" dialog.

Up until recently when I was mostly using FF3.6.24 (before being forced to use FF31 minimum to access the forums) I used an old abandoned addon in FF3.6.24 called XUL Profiler that does various Firefox profiling and made it trivial to determine where the CPU cycles were going down to a single line in a script file.

Turns out the built in Web Developer tools in newer Firefox versions capability in that regard. By using the Network tab and running a performance analysis once can nail down which script is lollygagging. Then using the Adblock "blockable items" option, a blocking rule can be created, reload the page, see if the hanging problem is gone, and poke around to see what else might also have been disabled by prohibiting that script. If nothing of concern, leave the blocking rule in place. If something like the reply editor here gets broken then it ain't going to work. A tradeoff.

Anyway, I suspect it is a newer browser related issue, specifically the new scripting engine(s) interacting badly with JavaScript on various sites, and until Mozilla gets the bugs ironed out (or says it's up to the individual sites to rework all their code to work with their new baby), the best way to deal with it is to somehow block the offending content - if it can be determined exactly what the offending content is - and to hope for little or no collateral damage*

*collateral damage being loss of desired functionality. There are various eBay scripts that chew up CPU all the time that I play with blocking on and off, but just this morning I found that one of them also contained routines for the tracking info dia;log on my sold items page. Had to unblock it since I want to be able to easily check status of items I've shipped.. Whack-a-mole.

There are issues with the newer versions of Firefox (and usually other browsers). One that comes to mind is that Firefox 3.6.24 and Firefox 31 that I use have no problem with saved form history for eBay feedback comments and all the other input boxes on the site. Firefox 52 does have a problem as do all newer Firefox versions. Haven't had time to work backwards and figure out when it got broken (FF49? FF40?) because it's a PITA (have to configure browsers totally differently than the way I have them and run multiple iterative tests to get results.) Once I figure out when it broke, the Firefox version history details might provide a clue as to what was changed, and if not, then more investigation into what eBay is serving up and what Firefox is doing with it is in order.

BTW, I do not, and have never had the specific issue that is the topic of this thread. Don't know if it's using older browsers, or the fact that NoScript and Adblock block a lot of eBay's scripts and subdomains, along with a HOSTS file that blocks ad servers and many ebay subdomains. Haven't felt any compulsion to turn it all off and try to break my browsers just to test 🙂

[greatestauctionever]

My Purchase History take 2 minutes to load sometimes.

[dirk12955]

Switching from Firefox to Google Chrome fixed many of these issues for me. I haven't seen the "PAge slowing down" message since I switched.

[sea0ceana]

I'm getting the SAME message from Firefox! I need to know who to blame: eBay or Firefox?

[sea0ceana]

I'm getting the SAME Firefox message! It's super annoying! I need to know who to blame: eBay or Firefox?

[sea0ceana]

I'm just guessing here, but COULD it be that eBay has too many advertisements loading? I can't get mine to stop no matter what I try.

[berserkerplanet]

Probably both. eBay for horrible quantity and quality of JavaScript and running ads, and Firefox for not handling that mess better.

Only real world option is to switch browsers (if there is something else that works better), or be proactive with Firefox and defend yourself with an adblocker and/or other techniques to reject/filter content that causes issues . See post 36.

[davespartan]

Ebay advertising revenue thats all that matters so thinking of stopping selling on this site and if others follow I bet the slow browser problem disappears!!!!

[johnnycomic]

Get "ad remover" and the pop ups never appear.

[joannmarie]

First, I am amazed this goes back to  2017.  I only recently started having problems and mainly use Firefox.  I swear Ebay customer support just doesn't care as they keep telling me to refresh your cache (does not work) although one person did tell me to try another browser.  I am switching browsers (just for Ebay) as that is the only place this seems to be happening.  Ebay does have lots of competition now especially in the clothing department so I understand the ads.  But what I don't understand is not having good support for their customers as that will encourage customers to leave and then who reads the ads so eventually you have the ads leave too.  Ebay only thinks for today - not the future.  One day they will go the way of Sears.