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RFE: User-Configurable Snowfall

HounHoun Registered User regular
Really, I'd just like to be able to turn it off.

Not because I am a hater of Xmas.

But because in this one browser on this one computer it's really, really struggling with it and locking my browser up occasionally. So for this browser in this computer, being able to turn it off would be a Christmas Miracle.

(Totally not turning the snow off at home. Long live the snow!)

*edit* I just figured out how to disable it with AdBlock, so unless you really want to hack a button in, you can ignore this request. For others curious to do this, filter on:

forums.penny-arcade.com/plugins/SnowStorm/*

Houn on

Posts

  • FoomyFoomy Registered User regular
    Yes please, being able to turn it off would be so nice. I like the effect but it is also making browsing really hard for me.

    Steam Profile: FoomyFooms
  • ManetherenWolfManetherenWolf Registered User regular
    Im also running into some issues with my CPU usage ramping up considerably when on a forum page with the snow.

    Not really causing any major problems for me directly, but it appears it is for some.

  • AshtonDragonAshtonDragon AKA The Nix Registered User regular
    It's causing my browser to crash too, if I leave a page up too long while I'm in another tab. The AdBlock method should work for me, though.

  • augustaugust where you come from is gone Registered User regular
    edited December 2014
    The snow also seems to be slowing my browser to a crawl at times.

    edit: used Houn's adblock suggestion to get rid of it.

    august on
  • DietarySupplementDietarySupplement Still not approved by the FDA Dublin, OHRegistered User regular
    edited December 2014
    The effect makes me think I am experiencing the early effects of a migraine. Thanks for the tip for disabling it.

    DietarySupplement on
  • IcyLiquidIcyLiquid Two Steaks Montreal, QuebecAdministrator, Vanilla Staff vanilla
    Admit it, you guys are browsing from this, aren't you?

  • HounHoun Registered User regular
    While hilarious, no. I'm browsing from Iceweasel 31.2.0 on an old Debian Wheezy box, and it just chugs on it. It's my secondary box at work, and where I usually browse from during the day.

    At home, it's not a problem.

  • ManetherenWolfManetherenWolf Registered User regular
    Im running it on the most recent Firefox update, Win 7 64bit. Like I said, for me its not a problem, but I have monitors running for my cpu and memory, and the cpu one spikes a good 15-20% from its normal idle when on the snowfall pages. Not enough to cause problems, but I imagine on some peoples it could.

  • ASimPersonASimPerson Cold... and hard.Registered User regular
    Yeah, my CPU spikes on my Macbook as well. I always have a tab open to the forums so it's a problem after a few minutes. I still think the effect is neat, though, so I just leave the forums up to whatever topic I last read instead of returning to the index.

  • Pixelated PixiePixelated Pixie They/Them Registered User regular
    I love the effect. I think it's very pretty. But it sure makes the site almost unviewable on the crappy thin clients we're stuck with at work. Without PA, I don't know what to do with my work day. :lol:

    ~~ Pixie on Steam ~~
    ironzerg wrote: »
    Chipmunks are like nature's nipple clamps, I guess?
  • DarkPrimusDarkPrimus Registered User regular
    I love the effect. I think it's very pretty. But it sure makes the site almost unviewable on the crappy thin clients we're stuck with at work. Without PA, I don't know what to do with my work day. :lol:

    Look at Steam sales...

  • SoundsPlushSoundsPlush yup, back. Registered User regular
    It drags my Firefox to a crawl. I had a bunch of tabs open, including YouTube, with no issue, but opening the forums in the background gave me 4-5 seconds of lag after CTRL+W before a tab would close. A fresh launch leaves no lag when closing a second tab, but the forum scroll remains less than smooth—CPU spikes from negligible to 35%, and stays there. Less an issue in Chrome where it jumps from ~3% to 15% and there's no choppiness, but it seems oddly resource-intensive for such a simple effect.

    Anyway, I just came looking for a better way to disable it than revoking NoScript permissions on the domain, so I'm good now. I like the visual, but not for that price.

    s7Imn5J.png
  • SeñorAmorSeñorAmor !!! Registered User regular
    IcyLiquid wrote: »
    Admit it, you guys are browsing from this, aren't you?
    root@server [/]# lynx forums.penny-arcade.com
    
    ********************************************************
    ********************************************************
    ********************************************************
    ********************************************************
    ********************************************************
    ********************************************************
    ********************************************************
    ********************************************************
    ********************************************************
    ********************************************************
    

    I can't see shit with all this snow... :)

  • Eat it You Nasty Pig.Eat it You Nasty Pig. tell homeland security 'we are the bomb'Registered User regular
    it destroys performance on my netbook. And granted my netbook's old as dirt, but it's still pretty annoying

    NREqxl5.jpg
    it was the smallest on the list but
    Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
  • MechMantisMechMantis Registered User regular
    Well, at least on my Microsoft Surface Pro 2, it's making the forums basically unbrowsable, with 10-15 second lag times on scrolling as suddenly the core that has Firefox on it is doing literally nothing but render snow.

    It also is interfering with general browser function too, with hefty lagtimes on switching tabs from the forums.


    Kinda frustrating, especially since ads that have had this exact same behavior are usually pulled instantly.

  • TubeTube Registered User admin
    Ok so I'm going to ask Icy about this, but seriously guys, there's something wrong with your computers. I'm on a Surface 3 right now, and do most of my browsing on iPad. A check of the task manager just showed 0 processor usage for PA tabs. I opened the front page ten times to see if that made a difference and it didn't blink.

  • TychoCelchuuuTychoCelchuuu PIGEON Registered User regular
    The snow seems to stop when the window loses focus so depending on how you are checking CPU usage you might be missing it. Having the page open 10 times won't do anything because at most the snow is falling on one page. When the snow window is in focus, Opera is using ~20% of my CPU (and sometimes it spikes to 40% for a second). When the window isn't in focus (or it's closed) Opera is using ~2% to 4% of my CPU.

  • zerzhulzerzhul Registered User, Moderator mod
    I just checked out mine on chrome. When I have a snowfall tab in focus, it uses ~17-20% of my CPU. It's not causing me any problems, but it's definitely a hog, for what it is.

  • ComradebotComradebot Lord of Dinosaurs Houston, TXRegistered User regular
    I was hoping for the opposite. I want more snow. I won't be satisfied until my PA forum looks like a scene out of The Grey, complete with the fear that there could be murder-wolves (well, PA forums so Dickwolves) just a few feet away.

  • EndEnd Registered User regular
    edited December 2014
    Tube wrote: »
    Ok so I'm going to ask Icy about this, but seriously guys, there's something wrong with your computers. I'm on a Surface 3 right now, and do most of my browsing on iPad. A check of the task manager just showed 0 processor usage for PA tabs. I opened the front page ten times to see if that made a difference and it didn't blink.

    I think video acceleration probably makes a big difference

    for example (even though visually it seems fine) it shows about 30-50% cpu usage on my laptop, because chrome blacklists the video card on it, so everything happens in software

    In contrast, my desktop is <=1%

    End on
    I wish that someway, somehow, that I could save every one of us
    zaleiria-by-lexxy-sig.jpg
  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    CSS animations can drag CPUs to their death, but, if you've got a CPU from the past 8 years (core duo) you should be fine. Especially if you use chrome and not IE.

    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • zerzhulzerzhul Registered User, Moderator mod
    My computer is certainly not super recent, but it's not 8 years old either. I think I did a full refresh in mid 2011? Don't have an intel chip though.

  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    zerzhul wrote: »
    My computer is certainly not super recent, but it's not 8 years old either. I think I did a full refresh in mid 2011? Don't have an intel chip though.

    Yeah 20% sounds about right then.

    Looking at the CSS I see some 3D calls, so GPU should be taking over at that point.

    @zerzhul‌

    chrome://flags/

    Browse to that and enable the override on software rendering and see if you notice a huge increase in performance/reduction in CPU.

    chrome://gpu

    Will give you more information as well.

    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • zerzhulzerzhul Registered User, Moderator mod
    that ended up not changing anything for me. I did try it out in opera though... 9%, as opposed to 20%.

    Still, not actually noticeably causing me any /problems/ it's just odd.

  • IcyLiquidIcyLiquid Two Steaks Montreal, QuebecAdministrator, Vanilla Staff vanilla
    FYI I lowered the snow volume and animation rate. Should improve CPU.

  • RedthirstRedthirst Registered User regular
    This is insane. With Firefox running in the background(PA tab is out of focus so snow doesn't work) and with other background programms I run, I have CPU usage of ~10%. When I switch to PA tab to let the snow fall, it jumps out to 30%. So you are telling me that goddamn animation of snow falling takes twice as much CPU as Firefox+Steam+Battle.net running in the background?
    The javascript only works for one page, later you need to use it again.
    I'm sorry, but I'm going with adblock, this is just ridiculous.

    steam_sig.png
  • SeñorAmorSeñorAmor !!! Registered User regular
    With all due respect Icy, wouldn't the prudent move be to disable the snow until a good solution for fixing the issue (e.g. - a toggle) can be implemented?

  • CaedwyrCaedwyr Registered User regular
    It isn't hurting my machine's performance, but on Firefox, I go from CPU usage of 1-2% to CPU usage of 28% when on a page with the falling snow. Something is a CPU hog in that script.

  • ZetxZetx 🐧 Registered User regular
    So, a toggle (via bookmarklet) has been here and was mentioned in one of those forum announcement thingies yesterday (IIRC) as well.

    I believe the CPU increase is because the script constantly adds/removes <div>'s, each <div> being a single 'snowflake' which it continuously moves around while they are in existence. And then the reason you won't see your CPU increase if you alt-tab/switch to your task manager is because this action stops when the tab is not in focus, so you'll have to open it and your task manager side-by-side to see the effect.
    Sample of the <div>:
    <div style="color: rgb(255, 255, 255); position: absolute; transform: translate3d(0px, 0px, 0px); width: 8px; height: 8px; font-family: arial, verdana; cursor: default; overflow: hidden; font-weight: normal; z-index: 0; display: block; bottom: 6.04160926793914%; opacity: 1; padding: 0px; margin: 0px; font-size: 16px; line-height: 10px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline; right: 48.6825976621235%;">•</div>
    

    At the time that I pulled it to "Inspect Element" there were 160 of 'em. Now imagine that every x seconds it calculates at lest the 'bottom' (6.04160926793914%) and 'right' (48.6825976621235%) value and hopefully one can understand how the browser becomes unhappy about it)

    76561197966849367.png
  • Spectral SwallowSpectral Swallow Registered User regular
    Zetx wrote: »
    I believe the CPU increase is because the script constantly adds/removes <div>'s, each <div> being a single 'snowflake' which it continuously moves around while they are in existence. And then the reason you won't see your CPU increase if you alt-tab/switch to your task manager is because this action stops when the tab is not in focus, so you'll have to open it and your task manager side-by-side to see the effect.

    Wow... that is... quite possibly the worst way to do that. Like really. No wonder it was killing folks computers.
    Like even a 30+ repeating gifs would be better. Or an animated SVG.

  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    http://codepen.io/NickyCDK/pen/AIonk/

    Something like this seems to only make my CPU go up to about 5%.

    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • NaphtaliNaphtali Hazy + Flow SeaRegistered User regular
    IcyLiquid wrote: »
    FYI I lowered the snow volume and animation rate. Should improve CPU.

    This is going to sound strange, but after you made that change it got worse performance wise on my laptop with firefox at home. I blocked it with adblock after that because it started nearly freezing the entire browser when the PA tab was open. Before whatever changes you made on the 10th it actually ran okay on it (and hardware wise, the laptop shouldn't have any problems with the snow) it ran fine.

    Steam | Nintendo ID: Naphtali | Wish List
  • IcyLiquidIcyLiquid Two Steaks Montreal, QuebecAdministrator, Vanilla Staff vanilla
    SeñorAmor wrote: »
    With all due respect Icy, wouldn't the prudent move be to disable the snow until a good solution for fixing the issue (e.g. - a toggle) can be implemented?

    I'm not the one who wants to keep this, even though I think it's pretty cool.

  • SeñorAmorSeñorAmor !!! Registered User regular
    Anyone using the AdBlock method of disabling the snow finding it not working more often than not?

    I have the full URL to the SnowStorm plugin folder set to be blocked and it only works probably 40% of the time. If I refresh the page once or twice, it seems to stop the snow. It's almost as if ABP isn't loading properly or something.

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