For End-Users, the cause(s) of "Unresponsive Script" messages on ebay

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Using the most current browser versions, ebay pages often result in a "Warning: Unresponsive Script" modal dialogue for me. For the end-user, your browser "locks/freezes up".

After research, I was disappointed by the past and current responses ebay associates provided end-users as solutions; a few were "you have a virus" and many others were "it's your browser. Upgrade." For them without experience writing code, which would be the average customer; providing these types of responses places improper aggravation on the user.

For curious end-users, here are the most common causes, which happens to be the causes of my issue; first some technical: Debugging ebay's somewhat-obfuscated and often dynamically-renamed JavaScript, I found uses of libraries to parse page content and make remote calls to other scripts using inefficient Regex to load resources and traverse the DOM using the slowest selectors possible.

When code like this locks up your browser, you as the end-user are at no fault and there is nothing on your (the client) side to stop these locks/freezes. Just know the main three causes with such code are (a handy list to use as counter response):

(1) Making calls for remote resources; each of which awaiting a response/timeout. If an ebay page uses too many, those waiting calls can make your browser appear "locked".

(2) No indices to prevent infinite loops/calls which eventually exhaust the stack. I read no defensive coding and few null checks.

(3) Usage of content providers to host scripts known to track end-user activities and serve advertisements. If you have an "ad blocker", "no script", or; like me, an extensive HOSTS list, these inaccessible scripts will lock your browser as soon as the script is loaded. In my HOSTS file, I block all Google-related ads/analytics which is another source of annoyance as an end-user.

My call stack when ebay locked Firefox:

truncate (templates-js-438dd6.js#7)

each (kixmrk5orq3d3huw05vg5j0shq2.js#2)

each (kixmrk5orq3d3huw05vg5j0shq2.js#2)

truncate (templates-js-438dd6.js#7)

(anonymous) (templates-js-438dd6.js#107)

load (templates-js-438dd6.js#5)

r (templates-js-438dd6.js#3)

A (templates-js-438dd6.js#3)

B (templates-js-438dd6.js#4)

(global) (templates-js-438dd6.js#115)

- N De Lioncourt

[berserkerplanet]

Nice work.

Unfortunately, CS isn't going to listen to or understand a technical explanation. The official response in the threads here (that I took issue with and got no response to) was basically to buy a new computer with more resources and hp to be able to handle it.

I personally don't have those issues, even using a 10 year old Core2 Quad 9550 2.83mhz CPU w/ 4GB ram. But I also don't use watchlists, collections, large purchase histories or any o the other eBay pages that most have problems with.

I do run into minor issues elsewhere on eBay and especially here in the forums and have some selective Adblock Plus rules to deal with those (usually a tradeoff, giving up some functionality by slapping down a CPU hogging script, and a game o whack-a-mole chasing the never ending stream of non-intuitive script names (I use an old old addon in Firefox called XUL Profiler that gets the data). And a huge hosts file 🙂

Playing with some ideas on on the fly eBay script sanitizing with GreaseMonkey, but that's low priority due to not really having issues, because it's a bit out of my wheelhouse not being a programmer, and because it wouldn't do anyone else any good.