Test Build: Asynchronous Location Bar Searches

[Shawn Wilsher]

Hey all,

A few months ago I decided to try to use the asynchronous storage API
that was added in Firefox 3.1 to help reduce the pain of disk IO on the
main thread. Sadly, it became quite apparent that this was going to be
too big of a change and need to much work to make it into 3.1, so I put
off doing any more work on it. However, this week I started working on
the patch again, updating it to work with the changes to the location
bar and the storage back-end. Today I finally got it passing all of our
existing tests (although, I know of at least one condition where it
fails and is untested).

Now that it's passing all tests, I feel comfortable posting a test build
for folks to try and see if it helps or not. I should note that the
current implementation is pretty dumb and doesn't take many
opportunities speed up results. Additionally, there are some other
performance wins that are on my mind that become a lot easier to do with
this newer implementation.

Admittedly, I haven't benchmarked this yet, so I don't know how it
compares to the existing code. During causal use, however, it feels no
slower than the existing implementation, but I don't usually have issues
with it. The goal here is to help out those who do have performance
issues with the location bar. In fact, that's exactly the feedback I'm
looking to get. So, if you are feeling ambitious and willing to live on
the wild side for a bit, I'd like you try try this test build. After a
little bit of use, let me know if you think the results are faster,
slower, or about the same. Note: this is build off of mozilla-central,
so it's like a 3.2a1pre build.

The build can be found here:
https://build.mozilla.org/tryserver-builds/2009-02-19_18:31-sd...@shawnwilsher.com-try-1019946addc/

Your feedback is greatly appreciated!

Cheers,

Shawn

[Shawn Wilsher]

Some folks are reporting issues with crashes that look like this:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=363271

So, I pushed a new build to the try server hoping that I just got a bad
mozilla-central changeset last time:
https://build.mozilla.org/tryserver-builds/2009-02-20_09:47-sd...@shawnwilsher.com-try-31328a1c0aa/

Cheers,

Shawn

[Mike Beltzner]

On 20-Feb-09, at 2:00 PM, Shawn Wilsher wrote:

> So, I pushed a new build to the try server hoping that I just got a
> bad mozilla-central changeset last time:
> https://build.mozilla.org/tryserver-builds/2009-02-20_09:47-sd...@shawnwilsher.com-try-31328a1c0aa/

The awesomebar basically doesn't work for me in this build - though,
UI responsiveness in the location bar (especially for large strings of
random characters) is much faster! :)

cheers,
mike

[Shawn Wilsher]

On 2/20/09 1:24 PM, Mike Beltzner wrote:
> The awesomebar basically doesn't work for me in this build - though, UI
> responsiveness in the location bar (especially for large strings of
> random characters) is much faster! :)

That's odd. The only difference from this changeset and the one before
is a different mozilla-central starting point. Local builds worked just
fine for me... :(

Cheers,

Shawn

[Shawn Wilsher]

Here's another one. I've verified that this works as expected for me.
In the past I've just verified that a local build works. I won't be
doing that anymore.
https://build.mozilla.org/tryserver-builds/2009-02-20_17:53-sd...@shawnwilsher.com-try-4758fef1cb9/

Cheers,

Shawn

[Shawn Wilsher]

Apparently the try server only built the first changeset I built and not
the second one that had the packages-static change, which explains why
some people ended up with no AutoComplete implementation at all.

Cheers,

Shawn

[Shawn Wilsher]

Hey all,

It turns out that I neglected to make the all-important packages-static
file changes that would actually result in a build that works for most
folks in my previous test builds. I thought I had fixed that with the
last build, but apparently I never submitted it to the try server (I had
the line in my terminal all ready to just press enter though!).

Without further delay, here is the new test build:
https://build.mozilla.org/tryserver-builds/2009-02-21_20:53-sd...@shawnwilsher.com-try-1bb16971859/

I've also made a handy little add-on [1] that lets you test this out on
1.9.1 and 1.9.2. I haven't tested this add-on extensively, but it
should work out OK. If you think you see a bug, try the test build
first before reporting it please.

Still want your feedback on if you think the results are faster, slower,
or about the same, so please follow-up!

Cheers,

Shawn

[1]
https://services.forerunnerdesigns.com/extensions/get/async-locat...@forerunnerdesigns.com/0.11/

[Mike Beltzner]

On 22-Feb-09, at 1:25 AM, Shawn Wilsher wrote:

> Without further delay, here is the new test build:
> https://build.mozilla.org/tryserver-builds/2009-02-21_20:53-sd...@shawnwilsher.com-try-1bb16971859/

Hey Shawn - with this build I still see the same symptoms. When I type
something into the URL bar I get a single match, and then after that,
even with the same source string, no matches show up. I need to force
quit to exit the browser.

> I've also made a handy little add-on [1] that lets you test this out
> on 1.9.1 and 1.9.2. I haven't tested this add-on extensively, but
> it should work out OK. If you think you see a bug, try the test
> build first before reporting it please.

Same thing happens to me with the add-on. I'm using a branch nightly.

cheers,
mike

[Shawn Wilsher]

On 2/22/09 5:50 PM, Mike Beltzner wrote:
> Hey Shawn - with this build I still see the same symptoms. When I type
> something into the URL bar I get a single match, and then after that,
> even with the same source string, no matches show up. I need to force
> quit to exit the browser.

Out of curiosity, what platform are you on? I'm about to post a new
version that seems to work a lot better for folks who weren't having it
work on irc.

Cheers,

Shawn

[Shawn Wilsher]

Hey all,

It seems as though the past builds still had issues on Windows. Mook was
kind enough to get be a stack of the hang on shutdown folks were seeing,
and I’ve modified the code to avoid making that happen (still not sure
why it happened, but I know how it could get there - bug is filed).
Without further delay, here’s an add-on that you can try out with the
latest fixes in! I’ve been told on irc that this one works much better
on Windows.
https://services.forerunnerdesigns.com/extensions/get/async-locat...@forerunnerdesigns.com/0.12/

If you want a test build instead, get it here:
https://build.mozilla.org/tryserver-builds/2009-02-22_20:17-sd...@shawnwilsher.com-try-6e37d86d907/

Cheers,

Shawn