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Graphics in forum posts loading painfully slowly when using the Safari browser


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I prefer to use the Apple Safari web browser to view forum posts. But when I do, in any topic that includes one or more large graphic elements in any of its posts, those graphics take forever to load. For example, this includes essentially all the png files in the posts in https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/124067-save-texte-png/ -- all the text loads almost instantly but each of the pngs renders a few lines at a time, so it is about a minute before I can see all of each of them. It is much worse if a post includes long, a highish resolution video -- for some of them it can take 10 minutes or longer for enough of the video to load before I can even begin to play it.

This does not happen if I use another browser like Firefox or Opera -- everything loads in just a few seconds, even very large & long videos.

Safari exhibits this sluggish behavior only for the Affinity forums, & has done so on two different iMacs running a variety of macOS versions & with at least the last 3 major Safari versions, including the just released v 14.0 which I am currently using.

I assume nobody else using Safari to access these forums sees similar behavior or it would have been reported long ago, so I am asking if anybody has any ideas about what might be causing this with safari on my Macs & what I can do to fix it.

TIA.

 

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.0 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
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1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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6 hours ago, Cecil said:

Forget current topic Subject.

Please don't suggest that anyone should do that. The problem I am having has nothing to do with the version of any Affinity app, only with how slowly the Safari browser displays graphics included in forum posts, be they pngs, videos, or whatever, regardless of the software used to create or post them to this forum..

It is the same when I use any version of the Safari browser installed on any of my Macs or on my iPad. This would suggest to me that there is something about the forum software itself that is causing this, except that as best as I can tell, nobody else has reported experiencing the same problem. That suggests there may be some setting I can change to eliminate it, so I am hoping someone knows what that might be & will be kind enough to mention it in a reply.

That is why I started this topic.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.0 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
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I'd agree with haakoo. I use Safari and I just clicked on your link in OP and it loaded in a second or two, all graphics included.

Maybe go into Safari preferences / Privacy / manage website data / remove all. I think that's how you clear caches now 😀

Whether it does or not, it helps me when I find it slowing down.

They just released a new version a day or so ago so you might want to update it.

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Maybe it is some kind of caching issue but if so, I would expect to see other Apple Safari users reporting seeing the same abysmal load times that I do.

As I said, I would prefer to use Safari on my Macs (& also on my iPad). With the exception of this form, for me it remains the fastest browser overall, supports Apple-specific features like HandOff, reader view, & others. Also, as of desktop version 14 it includes a feature that effectively eliminates cross-site tracking (which by using it I have discovered is extremely common across the web, with some sites allowing as many as 15 or so different trackers owned by other companies to share info about how I use their site).

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.0 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
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Yes, it's an eye opener .... just checked Privacy Report and found Safari has prevented 84 trackers from profiling me. Biggest culprit is Google / Doubleclick.net!! I was even tracked twice by Facebook and I don't even have an account or visit their site!! Great add-on!

But, that doesn't help your slow loading issues..... 😎

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24 minutes ago, Geoff777 said:

Maybe go into Safari preferences / Privacy / manage website data / remove all. I think that's how you clear caches now 😀

I really do not want to do that unless absolutely necessary because it would mean eliminating tons of useful info stored in cookies, databases, & local storage.

However, I periodically go through the list & purge selected ones. I usually avoid including anything from Serif when doing that but I just tried removing them (there are only a few) & restarting Safari but it did not make any difference. 😞

BYW, I started using Safari version 14.0 within a few hours of its release, & I do not think there is a newer version than that.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.0 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
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1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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4 minutes ago, R C-R said:

I really do not want to do that unless absolutely necessary because it would mean eliminating tons of useful info stored in cookies, databases, & local storage.

However, I periodically go through the list & purge selected ones. I usually avoid including anything from Serif when doing that but I just tried removing them (there are only a few) & restarting Safari but it did not make any difference. 😞

BYW, I started using Safari version 14.0 within a few hours of its release, & I do not think there is a newer version than that.

Yes, clearing the data means putting all passwords again (although they're probably all in Keychain?).

And I am talking about Safari 14 which I only updated yesterday.

Do you Etrecheck? It's free and may possibly help. Or just empty the caches, which I've just learned how to do!

Go to preferences / advanced and click "show develop menu in menu bar" then close it. You may have to restart Safari but there will then be a Develop option in the top menu..... in that there's an "Empty Caches" option....

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3 minutes ago, Geoff777 said:

Yes, it's an eye opener .... just checked Privacy Report and found Safari has prevented 84 trackers from profiling me. Biggest culprit is Google / Doubleclick.net!! I was even tracked twice by Facebook and I don't even have an account or visit their site!! Great add-on!

Perhaps ironically, it just stopped slimjet.com from allowing 3 trackers, 2 from Facebook & one from Google. For me, the big 'winner' is tvguide.com, which I use occasionally. Safari 14 blocked trackers on that site from fifty nine different data collection companies! That has to be a record.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.0 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
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1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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5 minutes ago, Geoff777 said:

Do you Etrecheck? It's free and may possibly help. Or just empty the caches, which I've just learned how to do!

I used to use Etrecheck, but not so much since he started adding so many features to it. I liked the old version better.

I added the Develop menu item to Safari's menu bar years ago, before that was an option in preferences & it had to be done with a Terminal command or a utility like Onyx. But until you mentioned it, I had forgotten it included the "Empty caches" option. I will try that shortly & see if anything improves, so a big thank you for mentioning it. 😀

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.0 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
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1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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30 minutes ago, Geoff777 said:

Good luck, hope it works. I assumed that was done clearing website data but maybe not???

Unfortunately, the only thing the Develop > Empty Caches option has "improved" for me is to make the thin blue progress bar indicator in the URL field show that loading topics with posts with large graphic elements is still loading at the same glacial pace as it has been, whereas before the bar filled up & disappeared as soon as the text parts loaded, which happens very quickly.

AFAIK, the Empty Caches option always clears the caches in a fraction of a second (even on my older & much slower iMac). I waited at least a minute after using that option so I have to assume it had finished.

I think I am just going to live with this for now. I can always use the Safari Develop "Open page with" menu item to open a topic with Firefox, Opera, or Chrome when needed.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.0 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
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1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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3 hours ago, R C-R said:

Maybe it is some kind of caching issue but if so, I would expect to see other Apple Safari users reporting seeing the same abysmal load times that I do.

 

Not seeing this on OS 10.12.6 or 10.14.6. Everything loads quickly. How many other websites are open when you get the slowdown? Any?

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Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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2 hours ago, Old Bruce said:

How many other websites are open when you get the slowdown? Any?

The number of other open websites makes no difference. It could be zero or a dozen others. There is also no difference if other sites are open in tabs or individual windows, or if I close all other open websites before opening the forum.affinity.serif one, or even if I open only that forum immediately after a cold start or logging into my Mac user account.

I am not sure about when I was using 10.12 on my older iMac but I know the slowdowns still occur on it running 10.14. I am fairly sure that was also true when it was running 10.13. The new iMac can only run 10.15. I did not check for this on my iPad until late yesterday, after I had already updated it to iPadOS 14.0 but I see the same slowdown behavior on it too.

It is only in these forums that I see this. I have checked various other web sites that load as many as 50 or more medium resolution images on a single page & that takes no more than 1 to 2 seconds on any of them. Since you do not see this on your Mac it has to be something specific to how Safari is configured on my 3 Apple devices but what that might be remains a mystery.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.0 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
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1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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6 hours ago, Old Bruce said:

Not seeing this on OS 10.12.6 or 10.14.6. Everything loads quickly. How many other websites are open when you get the slowdown? Any?

@R C-R   I don't either.   Using Safari 12.1.2.   Everything is opening as rapidly as ever, and videos start right away.   I am hanging on with my thumbs to OS 10.12.6.    But I was thinking about a new iPad.   Think not. 


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I do not know how your network is structured but I want to give some hints how it is with me. If some internet pages load very slowly or i have other performance problems, e. g. with downloads, I also perform the various measures already mentioned, such as emptying the browser cache, restarting the computer, etc.

Another thing to consider is your router, because you write that not only on Mac is affected, but all your devices with Safari. Is the latest firmware installed on the router? Did you restart the router? Sometimes it helps to restart the entire network, which means turning off all devices that are connected to the network. Then disconnect the router from the power supply and leave this state for some time. Then restart the router and then restart all other network devices.

Another possibility I always try, and which has been successful in several cases, was to change the DNS entry in the router. Somewhere in the router's settings there should be the possibility to enter a DNS serveradress. Normally the DNS serveradress of the internet provider is automatically stored there, but it should be possible to overwrite it. Please try to enter the DNS from this page: https://1.1.1.1/dns/ (scroll down here to "Set up on Mac" and then click on the sybol for router on the far right, then the information for the entries in the router are shown). Changing the DNS would be worth a try anyway.

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9 hours ago, Kaffeepause said:

Another thing to consider is your router, because you write that not only on Mac is affected, but all your devices with Safari.

I had not considered that -- & I am not sure your router-related suggestions will do anything (because all other desktop browsers besides Safari do not exhibit the slowdowns in these forums) -- but some of them sounded like worth trying anyway, even if they fix nothing.

I verified that the router firmware is up-to-date (it is) & then changed the DNS server addresses to the suggested ones. That automatically restarted the router. Unfortunately but not too surprisingly, that did not seem to eliminate the problem with the forum posts but some other sites may be loading slightly faster (hard to tell) so I will count that as a minor win.

Restarting the entire network by turning off all devices connected to it will have to wait for another day when I can find the time to test power cycling each one of them individually first to make sure they are happy with that.

Anyway, thanks very much for the suggestions & the time you spent posting them. It is much appreciated!

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.0 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
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1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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Some ideas:

What sort of external network are you using ? Type of network, upload and download speed, with a VPN etc. ? Same for the internal network: Locally connected by WiFi, or by LAN ? What is the network speed ?

There is a free service from Google that allows to measure for any web site how fast it is loading, which elements are slower than the average on the internet, and what to do to speed things up. Originally it was designed for web site developers to see how their site performs. But you can use it as well to see if there are problematic issues on a site that is slow:

https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/

Which DNS-resolver do you use ? Sometimes it is by default set to the resolver of your ISP, but there are faster services. The DNS-resolver converts the requested web site (which can be many , because modern websites are composed from many sources) to the IP address , so the content can be requested and loaded. I prefer the 1.1.1.1 (Cloudflare) over 8.8.8.8 or 8.8.4.4 (Google and Google fallback server). Both are very fast.

Another element in speeding things up is my Pi-Hole. A Pi-Hole catches all requests going to the internet and filter tracking and advertising requests. The advantage is that it surpresses these parts of the traffic, which means it is not requested and not delivered. An ad blocker has everything delivered, it will just not show. So a Pi-Hole reduces traffic at the source. To run it, you need a Raspberry Pi and you need to learn some Linux to set it up. 

Just to mention it, I have absolutely not problem with the forum site,  not on my MacBook Pro neither on my other iDevices.

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Regarding DNS: I have made the experience that DNS can actually influence individual services or websites while everything else is running smoothly. A few years ago, for example, downloads from the Mac App Store didn't work at all with the standard DNS of my Internet provider, while everything else worked without problems. When I switched the router to a different DNS service, the App Store downloads worked fine again. Hence my consideration about DNS.

Another consideration, which has already been mentioned, I also suggest: empty the cache via the Developer menu in Safari and additionally select "Disable extensions" in the same menu. Then quit Safari and restart it. Does this make a difference?

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First, thanks to all for your interest & suggestions. I appreciate it very much!

I have so far tried changing DNS servers, emptying caches, restarting Safari, changing iPv6 settings, deleting Safari preferences, clearing Safari's History, disabling the one Safari extension I sometimes use, etc. Alas, none of this has helped. I will try a few of the more extreme suggestions as time permits, once I have made sure they will not have any adverse effects on what is already working extremely well.

More background info about my stuff, mostly of dubious interest & relevancy:

The new 2020 iMac's SSD has over 500 GB available free space; Disk Utility finds nothing amiss with it. Rarely if ever do I use more than 2/3 of its 40 GB of RAM; Activity Monitor's "Memory Pressure" graph typically shows a thin green line with very few spikes even reaching ½ way to where it would turn orange, & "Swaps Used" still sits at zero, all of which pretty much eliminates inadequate storage or RAM space as causing any issues.

My network includes a cable modem connected by Ethernet to an Apple Time Capsule, with all local services supplied by the TC. (The cable modem has built-in Wifi, USB, etc. but all of that is disabled.) The Macs are connected to the TC using Gigabit Ethernet. All Ethernet cables are Cat5+ or better. I normally use an unmanaged switch to distribute signals to all the Macs but I have also tried connecting just one of them directly to the TC to eliminate any issues with the switch. The iPad is connects over WiFi to the TC. It is usually in the same room as the TC, no more than 10' from it.

My nominal ISP service is rated at 500 Mb/s downstream. Real world observed speeds are usually close to or slightly better than that, & rarely dip below 200Mb/s unless limited by a server I am connected to. Large file downloads like for new app versions from Serif or Apple are quick & consistent with those numbers. We have no problems streaming several 1080p movies to different household devices simultaneously.

Basically, everything works very fast, with the only exception being how quickly large graphic items included in forum posts finish loading after the remainder of the page has loaded (usually <1 second for that), & only with Safari.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.0 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
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1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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18 minutes ago, R C-R said:

My network includes a cable modem connected by Ethernet to an Apple Time Capsule, with all local services supplied by the TC.

As the slow loading only happens with Safari, this may not have anything to do with it whatsoever.... but I feel compelled to mention it anyway. 😊

I have used Time Capsule (until the disc croaked) and after that Airports. Every couple of weeks my internet would slow to a crawl and I'd have to re-boot everything and that cured it for another couple of weeks. It was "normal" for a few years. My kids shouting "Dad, the internet's not working" was commonplace! Then Apple stopped support for Airport and I looked for an alternative. I read about Mesh systems and eventually bought a Deco M9 system (3 pods). That was nearly 2 years ago.

The difference is astonishing. It is far quicker, far more stable and I've only re-booted a couple of time since I had it (and that was probably the ISP modem issues). I love all things Apple but I don't think their routers cut the mustard after what I've seen with mesh. Might be worth looking into.

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10 minutes ago, Geoff777 said:

Every couple of weeks my internet would slow to a crawl and I'd have to re-boot everything and that cured it for another couple of weeks.

FWIW, I had similar problems with one of the older 'pancake' style Apple routers. As best as we can tell the cause was high voltage spikes that entered the device via the ethernet cable connection from the cable modem, probably during the intense thunderstorms we often get in Texas. (Both the cable modem & Apple router were plugged into a commercial grade power line filter & surge suppressor so it is unlikely any spikes were getting into the equipment that way.) That eventually resulted in failure of the input port on the router.

Lesson learned, shortly after getting the TC, I purchased a high grade inline surge suppressor designed specifically for ethernet connections & inserted it between the cable modem & TC, making sure its ground wire was connected securely to a good earth ground. I also added a second grounding block to the coax cable where it entered the house to supplement the one installed by the cable company at the entry point to my property.

I may be deluding myself but I believe all this extra protection is at least partially responsible for the complete lack of any connectivity issues traceable to the TC.

I mention this only because I doubt that many people think about ethernet cabling needing protection from voltage spikes. I certainly never did until the router's input port failed.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.0 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
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