Websites that don't load until...

[Mich the Tester]

...you click on another address in the address combo box, then the website you wanted to view appears for a split second before the next one loads.

IE8 by the way.

What's going on when that happens?

[cailin maith]

...you click on another address in the address combo box, then the website you wanted to view appears for a split second before the next one loads.

IE8 by the way.

What's going on when that happens?

Magic.

[scooterscot]

OS x, you know it makes sense...

[TheFaQQer]

Magic.

Some of Churchill's technical prowess seems to be rubbing off.

[DimPrawn]

...you click on another address in the address combo box, then the website you wanted to view appears for a split second before the next one loads.

IE8 by the way.

What's going on when that happens?

Example please. Never seen this myself. I'm guessing you lot don't know how to keep a computer running and up to date.

It all just works for me, all of the time, no problemos.

[NickFitz]

One possible explanation is that browsers will block rendering (i.e. actually displaying the page) while scripts are downloading. If most of the page has loaded but there's a script it's still waiting for then you don't see anything.

Then, when you get tired of waiting and tell it to go somewhere else, it cancels the script loading. At that point the rendering engine says "Ah, we're not waiting for that anymore" and renders as much of the page as it has loaded. A moment later the new page starts arriving, so it clears the previous page away and starts with the new one.

If your computer was running at the speed typical in the days when IE4 was written, it wouldn't have time to get anything rendered in that short space of time, but now it can. Thus a minor implementation detail decided on by somebody in the late Nineties is shown to have mildly annoying implications once Moore's Law comes into play fourteen years down the line.

FWIW the blocking script is usually from an ad server (although Google Analytics has had a bad rep for that in the past, too). You could try hitting "Esc" or the Stop button first, as that will cancel the pending script download and might cause the browser to render what it's got. On the other hand, it might not - again, a lot depends on the internal implementation.

[scooterscot]

Example please. Never seen this myself. I'm guessing you lot don't know how to keep a computer running and up to date.

It all just works for me, all of the time, no problemos.

Say's he who is using the latest minimal computer requirements as recommend by MS

(HAL 2020 - with more memory than the universe has atoms)

[OwlHoot]

Hmm. Haven't seen that (as I rarely use IE8), but my Firefox is still afflicted with the bizarre bug whereby it goes into "mouse driven" mode.

In other words, all screen loading and animation freezes, except when I whizz the mouse round and round. So evidently mouse events alone are driving Firefox, and the timer is disabled or ignored. This happens quite often, and is completely baffling, although I haven't found anyone else who has seen it.

Usually happens after two or three days when I have been opening new Firefox instances, and have several of these each maybe with several tabs on the go, and a reboot fixes everything (until the next time).

[DimPrawn]

Say's he who is using the latest minimal computer requirements as recommend by MS

(HAL 2020 - with more memory than the universe has atoms)

I'm using a 12 core computer with 64 gigs of RAM and 4 SLI video cards running parallel on a 100mb direct to the backbone internet connection and it all seems to load within a few minutes no probs.

[Mich the Tester]

One possible explanation is that browsers will block rendering (i.e. actually displaying the page) while scripts are downloading. If most of the page has loaded but there's a script it's still waiting for then you don't see anything.

Then, when you get tired of waiting and tell it to go somewhere else, it cancels the script loading. At that point the rendering engine says "Ah, we're not waiting for that anymore" and renders as much of the page as it has loaded. A moment later the new page starts arriving, so it clears the previous page away and starts with the new one.

If your computer was running at the speed typical in the days when IE4 was written, it wouldn't have time to get anything rendered in that short space of time, but now it can. Thus a minor implementation detail decided on by somebody in the late Nineties is shown to have mildly annoying implications once Moore's Law comes into play fourteen years down the line.

FWIW the blocking script is usually from an ad server (although Google Analytics has had a bad rep for that in the past, too). You could try hitting "Esc" or the Stop button first, as that will cancel the pending script download and might cause the browser to render what it's got. On the other hand, it might not - again, a lot depends on the internal implementation.

tanks for a useful explanation!