[ps4rh]

As part of our PlayBook veal I've been fielding test reports and a comment that came back persistently is "Why does the browser stall loading certain pages?"

So I did a mini bake-off with the PB, both the iPad and iPad 2, and my 9800 Torch. On pages that have this problem (and CrackBerry is one) the PB is roundly smoked, sometimes to the tune of several tens of seconds, by even the 9800. This is with Flash off.

This happens on several networks, and in both Bridge and the normal browser. What seems to happen is:

• The Progress bar on both the iPads and the PB progress at the same rate, but the PB is displaying a blank page while the iPads are prgressively displaying the page
• The PlayBook will stall loading the page (usually attempting to pull images) and refuse to draw the rest of the page. The iPads and the Torch will, by this time, allow you to interact with the page (scroll, click, etc)
• The PlayBook will stick for a very long time waiting for a few straggling elements of the page to load, and will not perform well (scrolling is choppy, links slow to respond) until the page load is cancelled or eventually completes, which takes minutes.

I don't know what kind of design decisions RIM made, but there's something really wrong when the Torch can consistenly beat the much newer, much more capable PB on something like web browsing. It's up there with the "I know you typed that word wrong but I'm not not gonna help you with it" lack of autocorrect or the inability to precisely place the text cursor in it's ability to frustrate.

Anyone else seeing this? Better yet, anyone have a soltution, because this has really annoyed a few of my functional testers.

[lnichols]

Crackberry stalls in my Safari on my mac all the time and it is always the advertising content waiting to load, and it not loading the page without it. They PB browser still needs some tweeks to allow it to start loading before it has everything.

[z_scorpio_z]

Try loading crackberry with javascript disabled. This fixes the loading issue for me, I am guessing the javascript engine on the browser needs to be optimized, or it has issue with certain functions which are being used by CB and it slows the thing down.

[pastorbrad]

Try loading crackberry with javascript disabled. This fixes the loading issue for me, I am guessing the javascript engine on the browser needs to be optimized, or it has issue with certain functions which are being used by CB and it slows the thing down.

Seems to help fwiw

[dasDestruktion]

Crackberry stalls in my Safari on my mac all the time and it is always the advertising content waiting to load, and it not loading the page without it. They PB browser still needs some tweeks to allow it to start loading before it has everything.

For whatever reason, it is always the adverts that gum up my browser--especially on CrackBerry as well. Ads suck as it is. Now they break things. Besides that, I'm always "tapping" them because of the touch screen on the PlayBook. I must have made CrackBerry and other sites roughly 1000$ since I pick up this thing some time ago just accidentally opening up adverts.

Try loading crackberry with javascript disabled. This fixes the loading issue for me, I am guessing the javascript engine on the browser needs to be optimized, or it has issue with certain functions which are being used by CB and it slows the thing down.

I'm going to have to give this a go. Thanks for the suggestion!

[cooliosam]

with all the updates, the browser has gotten worse. it was pretty good on day 1 when i bought it, but the first update made the browser slow, and it hasn't recovered since...

[lawguyman]

with all the updates, the browser has gotten worse. it was pretty good on day 1 when i bought it, but the first update made the browser slow, and it hasn't recovered since...

Wow. I could not disagree more.

[bembol]

RIM is known for it *update at your own risk*. I wasn't surprised when the last update...

1. Slowed down the Browser.
2. Wi-Fi Sharing & Bridging No Longer Works

I got Bridging to work again with the OTA update.

[dasDestruktion]

RIM is known for it *update at your own risk*. I wasn't surprised when the last update...

1. Slowed down the Browser.
2. Wi-Fi Sharing & Bridging No Longer Works

I got Bridging to work again with the OTA update.

Sad by true. :/ I wish there were some way for us to be saving these OS builds and installing them on the PlayBook as can be done on BBOS devices. I sure hope that can be done--for the reasons above--with the QNX-based "super phones" whenever they might be released as well.

[s219]

I think the PlayBook browser has been a bit slow/laggy since day one compared to the iPad 2 and even the older iPad 1. RIM definitely has a lot of room to improve both usability and performance. People only using the PlayBook may not notice it so much, but when you use it interchangeably with an iPad 2, as I do, the sluggish performance, checker boarding, and choppy rendering really stick out like a sore thumb. It gets frustrating at times, especially when I pick up the PlayBook to quickly check something on the web, and it turns into a dog.

Javascript performance is indeed a major culprit, and it ties back to benchmarks you can run (sunspider 0.9) where the PlayBook scores about 2-3X slower than the iPad 2. This turns into seconds or tens of seconds of lags in real world performance when loading web pages with heavy javascript code.

[bpdude]

with all the updates, the browser has gotten worse. it was pretty good on day 1 when i bought it, but the first update made the browser slow, and it hasn't recovered since...

Thats why I backup, wipe and reinstall after updates. Fixes those strange esoteric issues.

[bpdude]

RIM is known for it *update at your own risk*. I wasn't surprised when the last update...

1. Slowed down the Browser.
2. Wi-Fi Sharing & Bridging No Longer Works

I got Bridging to work again with the OTA update.

Just like my Fedora machine and linux in general *update at your own risk*.

[cooliosam]

Wow. I could not disagree more.

your browser is faster? i've heard nothing but slow downs all over the forums. also, video playback problems from network sites like abc, fox, nbc...

seemed like RIM broke something with their updates.

I've heard of folks downgrading back to stock OS and fixing all said problems. I might try that..

[rafa247]

Try loading crackberry with javascript disabled. This fixes the loading issue for me, I am guessing the javascript engine on the browser needs to be optimized, or it has issue with certain functions which are being used by CB and it slows the thing down.

it works !!!
Specially in this web. Thanks.

[ps4rh]

It seems a shame. The point to the PlayBook is that the browser is supposedly more feature-complete (Flash, 100/100 in Acid3). Turning off JavaScript (and Flash) to get decent performance pretty much implies you may as well have gotten an iPad.

But that does seem to be borne out in the casual testing I've dine, and explains why the Torch can beat it.

RIM needs to fix the browser, and fast.

[s219]

It seems a shame. The point to the PlayBook is that the browser is supposedly more feature-complete (Flash, 100/100 in Acid3)

The "supposedly" part is really just marketing, as you have discovered. I think RIM leaned too heavily on Flash as a way to differentiate the device from the iPad, but in the process they ignored basic stuff like bookmark management, rendering, scrolling, javascript performance, etc, including many of the little touches that are important for usability.

[rambo1963]

Let me make this clear. All of us who have a Playbook use it for web browsing. The number one use. The browser function should be the number one thing thing this tablet does best. The browser function is poor at best. The Playbook should be the number one tablet out there today, but as long as most Playbook owners are having poor browser issues than BB will continue to suffer.

[lawguyman]

The same people keep trying to get some traction with the same false claims.

When you factor out the posts from the same few people you really don't see many complaints.

If there really was an issue with the browser this thread would be much longer than it is for the amount of time that it has been around.

The truth is that the Playbook's browser is the best tablet browser. Period. End of story.

A few extra seconds here or there in which the Playbook renders content that some other browsers can not render does not change this.
Speed is important, of course but only to the extent that it affect the user experience.

The browser can of course be further improved. Playbook has other issues. It is still far from perfect but you have to give credit where credit is due.

[bembol]

There's nothing wrong with the Browser (Speed, Flash, etc.). It's what RIM did to it with their latest upgrade.

[hooper]

I think the PlayBook browser has been a bit slow/laggy since day one compared to the iPad 2 and even the older iPad 1. RIM definitely has a lot of room to improve both usability and performance. People only using the PlayBook may not notice it so much, but when you use it interchangeably with an iPad 2, as I do, the sluggish performance, checker boarding, and choppy rendering really stick out like a sore thumb. It gets frustrating at times, especially when I pick up the PlayBook to quickly check something on the web, and it turns into a dog.

Javascript performance is indeed a major culprit, and it ties back to benchmarks you can run (sunspider 0.9) where the PlayBook scores about 2-3X slower than the iPad 2. This turns into seconds or tens of seconds of lags in real world performance when loading web pages with heavy javascript code.

the sunspider benchmark is very competitive.

[southlander]

Crackberry stalls in my Safari on my mac all the time and it is always the advertising content waiting to load, and it not loading the page without it. They PB browser still needs some tweeks to allow it to start loading before it has everything.

Yep. Yesterday I was getting "Waiting on adnxs.com..." a lot, using a desktop PC with DSL.

[southlander]

it works !!!
Specially in this web. Thanks.

Again wouldn't this just point to the 3rd party ad serving domains as the culprit? They would all load via scripts and disabling Javascript means you are just not running those scripts.

A fix is a fix, but the root of the issue is some of the 3rd party advertisers on CrackBerry. They need to fix their servers lol...

[acdcrocks]

While I like my PlayBook, I agree that the browser is not the fastest. It is not just the CB site but on most sites that I conducted a test with my buddy using an iPad (not even iPad2).

RIM is banking on a full browsing experience and it should make all attempts to make it perfect. Nothing lesser can be satisfactory in the ultra-competitive market.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[FF22]

Damn - I can live with the speed deficit - I want to be able to do a simple SEARCH/FIND on a webpage. The browser is not the best.

[SharpieFiend]

Try loading crackberry with javascript disabled. This fixes the loading issue for me, I am guessing the javascript engine on the browser needs to be optimized, or it has issue with certain functions which are being used by CB and it slows the thing down.

I find that disabling flash solves the problem for me.