Super Accelerated Animations In Firefox

Pkchukiss · Joined: Dec 06, 2002 Posts: 34

I am having some trouble with my FireFox installation.

Whenever I use it to visit any website, all the animations on that web page would be accelerated (i.e. it will animate at an extraordinarily fast speed). This problem is not only limited to the graphics on that page - even the blue progress bar in the status bar, and the circle progress indicator too are accelerated.

This problem is not limited to FireFox: I also use ThunderBird, and it also displays the same symptoms.

In addition to that, FireFox and ThunderBird seem to lag whenever I interact with the internal program dialog boxes. The buttons would follow through with mouse depresses, but the program would wait a while before actually executing the action.

I've tried to solve these problems by eliminating all my Mozilla installations, and re-installing fresh copies of the two programs, yet it failed to eliminate this problem. I understand that this problem is unique to my system because I could use my friend's installation on his computer normally. What is exactly causing the problems with these two programs?

Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional
FireFox version: Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0

Thanks for your help!

Jamestaylor · Joined: Jun 20, 2004 Posts: 392

Quote:

I am having some trouble with my FireFox installation.

Whenever I use it to visit any website, all the animations on that web page would be accelerated (i.e. it will animate at an extraordinarily fast speed). This problem is not only limited to the graphics on that page - even the blue progress bar in the status bar, and the circle progress indicator too are accelerated.

This problem is not limited to FireFox: I also use ThunderBird, and it also displays the same symptoms.

In addition to that, FireFox and ThunderBird seem to lag whenever I interact with the internal program dialog boxes. The buttons would follow through with mouse depresses, but the program would wait a while before actually executing the action.

I've tried to solve these problems by eliminating all my Mozilla installations, and re-installing fresh copies of the two programs, yet it failed to eliminate this problem. I understand that this problem is unique to my system because I could use my friend's installation on his computer normally. What is exactly causing the problems with these two programs?

Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional
FireFox version: Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0

Thanks for your help!

The fast animations is a well known problem. The problem is IE does it wrong, but most animated gifs are made to be displayed in IE so in firefox it's super fast (which is correct by standards)

Thunderbird uses firefox to render html mail, so it will have the same problem.

I'm not certain if there is a work around.

Pkchukiss · Joined: Dec 06, 2002 Posts: 34

I have read about the problem at the Mozilla forums.

I think that it makes no sense for the own browser's internal animations to be created with a frame delay accomodating to Internet Explorer (I could see the animations appearing normally on my friend's copy of FireFox).

There is also the problem of the unresponsive buttons, which I am sure are local to my machine, because my friend does not have any trouble with his FireFox.

Thanks again for your help!

Pkchukiss · Joined: Dec 06, 2002 Posts: 34

Recently, I noticed that the super accelerated animations seem to pause completely mid-way whenever I move the mouse in a certain way, and then speed up and pause again when I move it some more.

I've re-installed my Logitech MouseWare for my mouse, yet the problem still persist.

I have also installed (but have since then uninstalled) predecessors of FireFox (FireBird) in the past. Is it possible that a registry conflict is causing my problems?

halppo · Joined: Mar 12, 2003 Posts: 9

I'm facinated as I have long used FireFox, and Thunderbird when it was still FireBird, and have never seen your acceleration of animation problem. Take a look at http://www.powerskater.com/other.htm
and post whether the problem exists with the animated GIFs on that page.

Jamestaylor · Joined: Jun 20, 2004 Posts: 392

Pkchukiss · Joined: Dec 06, 2002 Posts: 34

I've been to the URL you mentioned, and yes, the problem exists for that page too.

I have an idea: does FireFox use any file that is native to Windows to render any of the animation? Could that be the problem (and I happened to have a corrupt Windows file?) I also had old versions of Netscape in my computer, and there was a time when both resided at the same time. If I was not wrong, Netscape also had the same problem.

I will run System File Checker and get back when I am done.

So far, I've gotten all my installations of FireFox without any extensions installed, and they already display the symptoms of this weird problem. I still hope to be able to solve it, and enjoy FireFox...

Ray2047 · Joined: Nov 01, 2003 Posts: 766

I checked the test page posted - http://www.powerskater.com/other.htm - in both Mozilla 1.7.3 and Firefox 0.8 (Win 2k/sp4) and the speed was normal. Not really much help I know but it seems to indicated some factor other then just Firefox/Mozilla is causing the problem. could it be the OS? Do you have a theme installed? Have you tried a new profile with no extensions or themes? There is also a file in profile tiled XUL.mfl that you can delete to cure some problems. IIRC Mozilla recreates it when it restarts. Always turn Mozilla off including Quicklaunch) before you do the last suggestion. . I haven't read the whole thread so if I repeated something sorry.

Pkchukiss · Joined: Dec 06, 2002 Posts: 34

Just now SFC finished checking the system files, and found nothing to replace (which I hope is a good sign).

I have deleted the whole profile folder, and forced FireFox to re-create it, but the same problem persist.

I saw that on the test page given, whenever I click my mouse anywhere on the page, the animations would pause for a second, then resume its mad frenzy. I am suspecting that it is a software conflict (if there is ever such a term).

I will try to restart my computer with Start-Up items disabled: see whether that helps.

I still still still hope to fix this nagging problem. Thank you all for your suggestions!

Pkchukiss · Joined: Dec 06, 2002 Posts: 34

I have decided to do the desperate: Re-formatting and re-installing everything on my computer.

This seemed to solve the problem. My guess is that perhaps FireFox used one of the old system files left over from its FireBird re-incarnation. Starting from a clean slate solved the problem.

But then, I would really want to hear from anybody who manages to solve the problem.

FireFox is great! It is faster than my Internet Explorer, and hopefully would be less susceptible to hacker exploitation with the hawk eyes of the open source community watching out for exploits constantly.

Pkchukiss · Joined: Dec 06, 2002 Posts: 34

Update:

It appears that what has been messing around with FireFox is none other than Service Pack 4.

When I re-installed everything, I put FireFox on the system before heading over to download Service Pack 4. After the reboot, FireFox started its frenzied animations.

I've since un-installed SP 4. Is there any way that I can get SP 4 to play nice with FireFox?

Ray2047 · Joined: Nov 01, 2003 Posts: 766

I use Win 2K/SP4 and it works fine for me in Firefox 0.8 and Mozilla 1.7.3 so SP4 may not be the main problem.

Pkchukiss · Joined: Dec 06, 2002 Posts: 34

I can certainly affirm that SP4 is the cause of this trouble for my system.

Firstly, this is a cleanly installed copy of Windows 2000, and with only ZoneAlarm installed, I downloaded and installed FireFox. Then I went to Windows Update to install SP 4. After the re-boot, the problem manifested itself.

I did not install anything else nor modify any of the settings in any of the programs, so I can safely conclude that one of the patches included in SP 4 isn't playing nice with FireFox. The trouble is, there are so many patches in that package it would be an insurmountable task to try to isolate the offending fix through conventional ways.

So if there is any way I can get SP 4 to waltz with FireFox, please do help me. Thank you very much for your replies so far, and I still hope to get SP 4 and FireFox on my system.

Edited:
To clarify my last paragraph..