Showing posts with label chrome. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chrome. Show all posts

Friday, January 18, 2013

Mysterious Chrome Websocket Connect Delay

Again, suddenly your Chrome browser stops connecting a WebSocket, or to be precise, it won't connect it immediately.

These the loveliest of errors, the ones without feedback. There is nothing to go on, no clues to debug. So instead, you irrationally suspect your own code (it hasn't changed). You revert changes to code you did, re-run, un-revert them, re-run, etcetera, swearing.

Luckily for you, this happened before, which helps debugging stuff where there is pretty much no clue what so ever. Takes some time, though, until you feel that deja-vu all over again. So now you wait longer each time before declaring a failure, and sure enough, as you remembered, after a minute or so, the connection succeeds. 

The malady is that you're having a Chrome extension, taking that minute or so to run. I would guess that this is caused by its not being able to connect, or something like that. Maybe a server is down. Maybe the minute-or-so is the time-out. Maybe the connections or failed connection attempts add up to precisely this minute-or-so. Anyhow.

So you disable the extension. (At "chrome://extensions/".) Mysterious delay, no more. That's what you do the first time.

The second time, you delete the JetBrains Chrome Extension. Why did you keep it after the evaluation period expired, anyway? There is even the cutest little animation of the trashcan lid ajarring. Awww.

...I don't know how it suddenly got reenabled. Or if it got reenabled, but worked fine, only to fail later, i.e. just now. Maybe Chrome somehow restored older settings during the frequent crashes I subject it to. 

Thursday, January 3, 2013

CSS Position Absolutely Got Better?!

Very odd, now "position: absolute" with both top and bottom (or right and left) works to affect layout! At least in Webkit browsers. Chrome and Safari.

Do you folks know what that means? Sane layout is now possible using CSS. And so, 2013 is looking to be a great new year already.

Unbelievable: Progress!

Chrome snapshot:



Imagine resizing and having the layout follow suit perfectly.

But not in Firefox. See how it falls -- wait for it -- flat:



Seems that the vertical layout just collapses.

Worth noting: I've never seen any documentation say that it should not work, i.e no wording like "but if you apply both left and right, or both top and bottom, results are undefined". But I haven't really read the spec.

So, when did this happen, recent Christmas?


------ update -----

Firefox 17: no change.
(Oh I wasn't quite up-to-date...)
Firefox 18: no change.

Sunday, October 28, 2012

JavaScript Development Sucks

I'll try to be constructive. First, I'll collect a list of things that are ...bothersome. Then, each problem can get its own blog post, at least the non-trivial problems, with discussion and hopefully some solutions or work-arounds.

This list is about developing using a browser, not about running Node.js or something like that.

Here we go...

JavaScript Development Issues

Tool Issue:

Issue: Fake read-only files in browsers. I often edit the source code in the browser by mistake; and then I can't save the edits.

Issue #2: Staying stopped at breakpoint uses two cores (in Chrome). Slows down the whole computer. Also makes fan noise, burns energy, creates heat.

Issue #3: Debugger not active on some reloads.


Issue #4: Chrome crashes when my Java server is terminated. (Solution: close affected tabs, so that the connections close. Without connections, Chrome seems to do fine.)

Issue #5: Sometimes getting stuck before anything at all is shown: no page, no debugger, nothing but whiteness.

Issue #6: Dependency management.

Issue #7: Editors/IDE.

Issue #8: Eclipse Java + JS == not true. a) When a JavaScript view is open, you can't do Open Type. Very annoying. b) 'Run' command on JS file gives me: 'Not on JS build path'. Damn annoying.


Issue #10: Too dynamic. No type system. No constants. No block scope.

...to be continued.

Chrome Debugger Multithreading


This is what multithreading means in the context of the Chrome Javascript debugger:

1023 Google Chrome Helper 81.9 5 111.9 MB  Intel 1025 Google Chrome Renderer 70.3 6 78.5 MB   Intel

So it makes use of multiple cores: 


This, when halted at a breakpoint. Well, winter's nearing, and it's probably going to be a cold one, so we may need the extra heating. And maybe Chrome 23 will fix this...right. 

I'd really like to know what it's doing with these cycles.