bug, maybe?

[Rogers George]

Lately my firefox has been locking up maybe once a minute or so
(haven't timed it) for several seconds, (even showing the not
responding message in the title bar and greying out if I keep
clicking) Then it returns to normal, not having queued any clicks I
did while it was locked up. I took out a bunch of add-ons, and list-it
seems to be the culprit. Does the app check the server regularly or
something? The periodic interruptions are a deal killer for me if they
are caused by list-it.

As always, I'll do what I can to supply more info.

[David Karger]

Rogers, we'll look into it. While lack of correlation does not imply
lack of causation, we haven't been getting any other complaints of this
problem, so it may be (an interaction with) something else on your machine.

We'll be a bit preoccupied until thursday (paper deadline) but will
tackle the issue then.

[gpzbc]

Very Interesting!!!!!!

So, I've been trying to track down a culprit lately too.
Every minute or two, my CPU spikes and Firefox becomes mostly
unresponsive. I noticed it most when I was typing long emails in
gmail. I would be typing and then all of a sudden the text was no
longer being input. Within a few seconds, Firefox would become
responsive again and and try to catch up by displaying all of the text
I had just typed. It is as if I am typing very fast.

So, I too have been trying to figure which of my add-ons iis causing
Firefox to behave this way. I had disabled most of my add-ons but
none fixed the problem. However, I hadn't tried List.It until I read
this message this morning. As soon as I disabled List.It, my problem
went away. No doubt in my mind.

So I tend to agree with Rogers about a bug. However, I haven't
noticed a total greying out of Firefox. Perhaps Rogers and I have
different systems that max out at different points?

Please let me know what I can do to help track this bug down. I may
have to disable List.it until then because it is definitely taxing my
system.
Thanks!!! good luck with your paper.

[David Karger]

OK, it is good to have this confirmation. Please be patient with us
until thursday (conference paper deadline) and we will then immediately
make this a priority to investigate and fix.

thanks
David

[gpzbc]

Any progress on this bug?
I understand you have other projects, and that is fine. I'm just
curious.
Thanks!

[electronic Max]

Thanks to both of you for the detailed bug report. I'm on it and
although I can't claim I've squashed it yet, I'll try to get out a
patch by mid week.

Sorry about this and for the EXTREME delay in response. We had to
drop everything to work on our paper deadline (ah grad school) but now
we're back in action. Also, the team is working on UI improvements to
reduce the amount of UI clutter and clean things up based on your
feedback. Stay tuned for a possible roll out by the end of the week!

Thanks,
Max Van Kleek
for the list.it team

[gpzbc]

Thanks!

[electronic Max]

Dear listit-friends,

Based on reports from several of you, the current release of list-it
seems to occasionally cause Firefox to stall on some computers and
operating systems. We're working on tracking down what's causing that.

I just finished making a change to List-it which should speed up
accesses to the note db: I changed the shape of the database table
which is used to store notes. I won't bore you with details but the
basics are that I switched it from a triple store schema to a wide-
column schema (with a misc/json encoded text column for extra fields
for future growth). I also added sqlite3 indexes to the notes table.
Which should make note loading and saving faster.
On my computer, this version causes Firefox to start significantly
faster and seems more responsive. I have more than 5000 notes in my
list, and it is coming up in a couple seconds on my macbook pro. Also
when list-it is synchronizing, FF doesn't exceed 20% CPU utilization
on my mac anymore.

But, I'm not sure if this will cure the ills that you reported. I'm
going to keep it a beta release until I do more testing.

If you'd like to try it, please try it by clicking here:
http://listit.csail.mit.edu/releases/builds/listit-0.4.7.5.xpi **
beta release

** PLEASE note: The first time it restarts Firefox it may take a FEW
MINUTES to start. It will pop up eventually.
That's because it's upgrading the notes database -- it only has to
do this once.
Do not quit Firefox while this is happening. Next time you
restart Firefox, it should restart much more quickly.

Also, right now our poor server is overworked [even more than graduate
students] and so synchronization is slower than usual. We are working
to figure out how to make the server less stressed.

If you do test it, please let me know if it's any faster or if your'e
still seeing it stutter. Also let me know if you run into any problems
with this new version.

I haven't declared victory yet....

Thanks so much for your help everyone,

Max Van Kleek
ph.d. candidate // list.it team lead
MIT CSAIL

[gpzbc]

Thanks!
I'll give it a whirl and let you know how it goes.

[gpzbc]

I'm sorry to report that my problem still persists.

It is as if Firefox just stops working for a 2-3 seconds about every
30 seconds or more. I can give you two examples of how it manifests
itself to me. First, it is very noticeable while typing in gmail or a
similar program. I will be typing a sentence and all of a sudden my
text is no longer appearing on the page as I type. If I keep typing,
all of the text that wasn't appearing, is suddenly spit out on the
page in an effort to catch up to my typing. The second example that
I notice is by watching the cursor. It will stop blinking for the 2-3
seconds while Firefox stops working.

This is two ways in which the problem manifests itself to me, but more
generally speaking, Firefox just freezes up for 2-3 seconds while
list.it is doing whatever it is that it does during that time. I
should also mention that I have a cpu meter running on my desktop.
I've noticed that it spikes during these moments where FF stops
working.

And it definitely appears to be list.it that is causing the problem.
It goes away as soon as I disable it, and comes back as soon as I
enable it.

Please let me know if I can help you track the bug down.

[gpzbc]

Any progress on this bug?

Thanks!

[gpzbc]

It's been pretty quiet on here lately. I'm just checking to see if
this bug has been squashed yet? list.it has been unusable for me in
this condition.
Thanks!

[electronic Max]

Hi!

Sorry, we're a bit behind! We're working on a crazy (side) project
called Atomate for a deadline on Monday -- basically a smart reminder
system that let's you make special "rules" for when notes (and other
notifications) should appear. You can tell these rules to show you
particular list-it notes when you (physically) get to places, look at
web pages, etc..

We'll be back to list-it core in a couple days! Sorry and thanks for
your patience.

Max

>>>>> listit-0.4.7.5.xpi **

[gpzbc]

Sounds good. Thanks for the update.

[electronic Max]

hi roger + dylan,

indeed. what you are describing is likely the result of the background
syncs that list-it does with the server to keep your notes up-to-
date. we are trying to figure out ways to speed this up and get it
off the main thread. i've only spent a day or so on it this weekend

i have a short progress update -- i've managed to offload half of the
sync work to a worker thread, which is a new feature offered in
FF3.5.x and newer. Basically it lets Firefox extensions like List-it
get access to more than one thread, but in an extremely restricted
(read: annoying) environment. For example, it can't access the
database on the background thread, but it CAN make actual network
calls. So what I've done is split the sync up so that database
access happens before the sync, and then it delegates it off to the
background thread for encrypting the notes and sending it over the
wire. I've tested it and on my machine, I can sync while playing 2
youtube videos in HD without it hiccupping. However, since I haven't
tested on Windows or other machines, I'm not convinced that this has
cured the hiccuping you are reporting -- we're still looking into
things. If you would like to try this release, please go here:

http://code.google.com/p/list-it then choose "Downloads", and click on
the listit-0.4.8-pre1.xpi link there. This is where we post
intermediate/nightly builds of list-it.

But if you'd like to wait we're planning to roll out a full "0.4.8"
release with some new user interface features our undergraduate
student Greg is working on -- he's adding a right-click context menu,
printing, and I'm planning on adding note export features (finally!).
This will also have the new worker thread architecture I've just
described. We'll try to get that out at the end of the this coming
week or early the week after.

Thanks for all the feedback and messages
Max
for the list-it team

[russellcardwell]

Glad to find this thread. I've been trying for several weeks one add-
on at a time to find the cause of the intermittent Firefox freeze
symptoms described above. I finally narrowed it down to list-it. So
far, it's been working freeze-free all day with list-it disabled. It
sure would be nice to have a frost-free list-it back, though. But I
can readily identify with the grad school deadlines. (I was terrified
that it might turn out to be Zotero causing the problems. And the last
few years of my life exist only in the virtual world of the
Zotero.sqlite database.) Thanks for all your work on this software
project, and I await the new release with bated breath.
-Russell

On Nov 8, 7:32 pm, electronic Max <electro...@gmail.com> wrote:
> hi roger + dylan,
>
> indeed. what you are describing is likely the result of the background
> syncs that list-it does with the server to keep your notes up-to-
> date.  we are trying to figure out ways to speed this up and get it
> off the main thread.  i've only spent a day or so on it this weekend
>
> i have a short progress update -- i've managed to offload half of the
> sync work to a worker thread, which is a new feature offered in
> FF3.5.x and newer.  Basically it lets Firefox extensions like List-it
> get access to more than one thread, but in an extremely restricted
> (read: annoying) environment.  For example, it can't access the
> database on the background thread, but it CAN make actual network
> calls.  So what I've done is split the sync up so  that database
> access happens before the sync, and then it delegates it off to the
> background thread for encrypting the notes and sending it over the
> wire.  I've tested it and on my machine, I can sync while playing 2
> youtube videos in HD without it hiccupping.   However, since I haven't
> tested on Windows or other machines, I'm not convinced that this has
> cured the hiccuping you are reporting -- we're still looking into
> things.  If you would like to try this release,  please go here:
>

> http://code.google.com/p/list-itthen choose "Downloads", and click on

[gpzbc]

I've been testing out the -0.4.8-pre3.xpi release for the past few
days. And I don't notice any of the lag that I noticed before. So
far, everything looks good! Great work!
Thanks!

On Nov 16, 12:39 pm, russellcardwell <russell.a.cardw...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> >http://code.google.com/p/list-itthenchoose "Downloads", and click on