High CPU Usage on Desktop Website

I mostly have older equipment, the newest being a refurbished panasonic toughpad fz-g1 with external monitor and keyboard, win 10. On the whole this machine is fast enough for most things, but does struggle if I try and open multiple windows. Most notably a problem when dealing with iNat alerts, as they all need to be opened at once, or they are lost. I have a further problem in that the machine shuts down with no warning (nothing in the logs) presumably due to over heating and a thermal protection of some sort. It is a race to get all the tabs open, so that if it does crash, at least they all will re-open again when I restore the browser after starting up again. Some days this can be 4 to 5 crashes… I have had a response from panasonic, but because I purchased it privately some time ago, no warranty is in effect. A technician at panasonic kindly offered that I could send the machine to him and he would take a look, but with no guarantee of being able to fix it, no inidication of what the cost would be, no indication of how long it would be away for, and I am in a situation where I can’t afford the return freight, let alone the repair cost and/or time out of action.

I do have a much older machine, win95/chrome and it does work, but forget opening multiple tabs.

My iNat usage at present is in a very reduced state, as from September through December I will be requiring my PC and iNat to undertake observations in a paid capacity (however not sufficiently paid enough to be able to shell out for new equipment), so I am very much not wanting to risk either the computer or my iNat account for that matter.

So for me, this matter is of extreme interest! Anything that can reduce the stress on my poor not-so-toughpad would be a very welcome change!

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On my computer, I don’t think I’m seeing iNat using any more resources than several other webpages I viewed (while viewing CPU usage). I looked at MSNBC, New York Times, and a few others. When the pages load, Firefox hits near 100% CPU usage on all those sites, then fluctuates between 0% and 10%. Inat does the same, even when I have 12 observation tabs open from the Identify page.

yeah, i find that if i leave the identify page open for a long time, like many days, that can slog things down, otherwise it is similar to other websites such as google mail/maps. Of course, if there are ways to make it run faster and more efficiently without losing functionality i am all for it.

Here’s the results of my test. For various websites, I opened Firefox, went to the webpage, and very quickly opened up 10 tabs from links on the page. Looks like iNat is about the same as Smithsonion’s website. NPR’s website is a much bigger CPU hog. For iNat, I went to Identify and opened up 10 observations.
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1OdWdy0N6TDi0D_RXAmuYtOb_uT4X6G5_dOIX7inm_j0/edit?usp=sharing

Well there are certainly several not optimal pages on the internet … question is how to improve this one! https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/developers

Not saying iNat isn’t slow (there’s a whole topic about ways to optimize use for areas with poor internet connections), but as per the above anecdotes I also find my computer works similarly hard when I have a ton of tabs open regardless what website it is. Why not use the Identify page to add IDs to multiple obs in a single tab? https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/video+tutorials#identify

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What should be the target for CPU usage for iNat (or any website)? 0%, 1%, 2%? Is there an agreed upon target that webdesigner organizations encourage folks to strive toward?

When I’m identifying from the Identify page, I never open up any tabs.

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to be fair, the iNaturalist website is doing a lot, has a lot of graphics, and it seems to be built in a way to allow for maximum configurability and modularity (think different languages, API to allow for different UIs, etc.). so i don’t think the way it performs is that bad considering all that.

that said, there are always ways to make things a little more efficient (assuming there is the manpower to do so). for example:

  1. if you open up an observation detail page, there are “More from [observer]”, “Nearby observations”, and “Observations of relatives” sections that i bet most people never use. maybe if there was an option to collapse these sections and make the stuff load only if expanded, that could save on resources a bit.
  2. when i had a really slow internet connection, i really hated when someone identified something to a really high level (ex. plants) because it would always take extra time to load (the stuff for) all the extra little points in the map for nearby (plant) observations. i think there was a suggestion at some point to add a little switch to allow someone to see nearby observations or not, and something like that might help.
  3. it looks like the average observation detail page has maybe 1-2MB worth of pictures and other stuff to download. but it also looks like for each tab that’s opened, there’s 1.5MB worth of fonts downloaded (including maybe a duplicate?) and 2MB worth of system code loaded. there might be ways to chop things up into smaller pieces or cache stuff better or share stuff between tabs better. (but all that takes manpower.)

if someone really wanted to, there’s nothing that prevents a person from creating a more streamlined version of the iNaturalist website (via the API) that could run faster because it does less. or i bet you could even help to streamline the core iNat code, if you have the coding ability and time and don’t mind working for free. it would probably be a good thing anyway to have more than just a handful of people who understand the code just in case…

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Well not every observation is of an easy to identify organism, and not every iNaturalist photo shows the organism sharp and in adequate size. I often look at all uploaded photos at fullscreen to check all visible characters before identifying something to species or lower rang. I also like to compare existing research grade observations and need ID observations of a certain area and taxonomic group, which means i barely ever use the Identify page.

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Do you mean those tiny thumbnails? I’m referring to opening up the Identify modal where you can view images much larger.

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bouteloua, i have no clue what you mean with identify modal …
the identify page i am talking about is this one https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify
As i told you i barely use it.

This tutorial helps explain how you can view the images larger within the Identify page rather than opening a new tab: https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/video+tutorials#identify (referred to as pop-up)

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As this page does not show all available observations of the chosen area and taxonomic group, i do not really consider it helpful. Thanks for the video link though.

I use it all the time to view all the available observations of the chosen area and taxonomic group. You just have to use the filters to include Research Grade, Casual, reviewed observations, etc in the results.

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ok bouteloua, you show me how i can compare all moth of the “Arctiinae” of the “Greater Antilles” (did exactly that last night), in one tab on the identify page … and i promise that I will make an exception and waist my time watching a internet video whos content could be written in 2 lines :D.

I’ll shoot you a private message. :)

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The internet needs more Cassus (plural of Cassi?) :)

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I often have 10-20 tabs open or two separate browser windows side by side with multiple tabs in each. I don’t have any performance issues even though my computer ( on Windows 10) is almost 8+ years old and a low end one too. My primary browser is Opera which runs on the Chromium engine, just like Chrome does. There is a setting that might make a drastic performance improvement if you like having many tabs open - “delay loading of background tabs”. I’m not sure exactly how it works because when you open a tab in the background it does load… because it puts the page title on the tab bar. But, somehow it seems to make the browser handle all these open tabs just fine. It could just be an Opera thing too. I also use Firefox and Chrome, but not as my primary browser and not with a bunch of tabs open. I think a similar setting may be called “tab throttling” or something like that.

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In general terms, I find that both Firefox and Chrome use a lot more resources than needed, due to their design. Neither seems good at clearing their caches. I use the Brave browser, which is also built off Chromium as my primary browser.

I haven’t noticed iNat using anymore resources than any other website, but I also probably have never had 10 tabs open at once for iNat. I suggest a different browser than Firefox.

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