Youtube vs. slow network connections on Pale Moon

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slownet

Youtube vs. slow network connections on Pale Moon

Unread post by slownet » 2021-04-28, 22:04

Moderator note: split off from other thread for being totally off-topic.

Just to give a different perspective on the issue. The only internet option I have is through a hotspot on a phone. That's after leaving dial-up. Of which some people say, why are there people still on dial-up. It might be faster. My internet speed runs about 128KB, sometimes slower, sometimes as much as 1MB/s!. When watching youtube videos, it is not very conducive to hear a few seconds, a long pause, a few more seconds. It's not always that way, but there are times where it pauses to buffer more. And that's at selecting the quality at 240p. Other people can watch videos in a continuous stream for the most part. Should I not have that option? A lot of times, I can just hit the pause button, wait a while, and it then keeps up for the most part. Other times it doesn't. So there are videos I have downloaded to be able to watch them in a coherent fashion. While I don't know what percentage of people have my similar issue, I can imagine there are others. Just to let others know there are some reasons of usability why people download videos.

Regarding Pale Moon hanging, I'm having trouble with playing any videos in Youtube as of recently. I've created a new profile with the only tab being loaded is youtube, and it hangs briefly when bringing up the main site. I click on a video and it hangs a long time. Sometimes not so long, but other times I've left it and it never comes back. Doing a search does bring up a list of videos. If I minimize the window, then restore it, parts of the youtube page is displayed (the circling player frame, the suggested side list of videos, the search field), but the rest of the browser is blank. I have a system monitor running and the CPU is at minimal levels. The highest process is the X window system running about 10%. I had found in my other profile that changing user agent strings varied from blank icon spacers to the actual youtube icons.

[PCMartin]

Re: Youtube vs. slow network connections on Pale Moon

Unread post by [PCMartin] » 2021-04-30, 06:20

Off-topic:
slownet wrote:
2021-04-28, 22:04
[T]here are some reasons of usability why people download videos.
A lot of people with fast Internet, especially those who live in countries where fast Internet is widespread and relatively inexpensive, are guilty of forgetting that many, many Internet users are stuck with much slower connections. Thanks for this useful reminder.

As for the gravamen of your post, is it possible that YouTube's coding itself requires a minimally fast Internet connection to work correctly? I.e., that parts of it might time out if it doesn't get the desired results within a certain amount of time? I don't know; I'm just taking a shot in the dark.

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Re: Youtube vs. slow network connections on Pale Moon

Unread post by jobbautista9 » 2021-04-30, 06:34

[PCMartin] wrote:
2021-04-30, 06:20
Off-topic:
slownet wrote:
2021-04-28, 22:04
[T]here are some reasons of usability why people download videos.
A lot of people with fast Internet, especially those who live in countries where fast Internet is widespread and relatively inexpensive, are guilty of forgetting that many, many Internet users are stuck with much slower connections. Thanks for this useful reminder.
Off-topic:
So true. I was in a 2 Mbps (or 250 kB/s) connection for like a decade in the 21st century. Now I'm glad that I finally was able to upgrade to a 40 Mbps connection (or 4 MB/s) like 6 months ago.
[PCMartin] wrote:
2021-04-30, 06:20
As for the gravamen of your post, is it possible that YouTube's coding itself requires a minimally fast Internet connection to work correctly? I.e., that parts of it might time out if it doesn't get the desired results within a certain amount of time? I don't know; I'm just taking a shot in the dark.
That might be possible if you're really on dial-up, but OP says their connection ranges from 1 to 10 Mbps, which shouldn't be too bad for YouTube.
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[PCMartin]

Re: Youtube vs. slow network connections on Pale Moon

Unread post by [PCMartin] » 2021-04-30, 06:54

jobbautista9 wrote:
2021-04-30, 06:34
That might be possible if you're really on dial-up, but OP says their connection ranges from 1 to 10 Mbps, which shouldn't be too bad for YouTube.
Periodic cell-network congestion or throttling?

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Re: Youtube vs. slow network connections on Pale Moon

Unread post by Night Wing » 2021-04-30, 08:00

I watch a lot of YouTube videos in full screen mode and my external monitor is 27" in size since I use a desktop tower computer. Most of the videos I watch are 720p60 to 1440p60 in high definition (HD). This computer is now eleven years old, but it came with 16 GB of memory and an Intel i7 processor with a speed of (2.80).When I'm watching videos, my computer is using about 1 GB of memory with 15 GB of memory still available. I never have any problems when visiting YouTube to watch videos.

I live in a small town in southeast Texas. My ISP is Comcast and I just checked my download internet speed when I was viewing a YouTube video and it was 322 MB/s.

At this time, I'm using 64 bit linux Pale Moon 29.2.0 running in 64 bit linux Mint 20.1 (Ulyssa) Xfce. In my opinion, this is not a problem with either linux or windows Pale Moon. Most likely culprits, slow internet speed combined with maybe not enough memory for the OP's problems with YouTube.
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slownet

Re: Youtube vs. slow network connections on Pale Moon

Unread post by slownet » 2021-04-30, 15:48

[PCMartin] wrote:
2021-04-30, 06:20

As for the gravamen of your post, is it possible that YouTube's coding itself requires a minimally fast Internet connection to work correctly? I.e., that parts of it might time out if it doesn't get the desired results within a certain amount of time? I don't know; I'm just taking a shot in the dark.
I suppose it could be possible that YouTube could fail to run/display/play with inadequate speed. Their ads will play sometimes, but hangs before the real video starts. But should a website be able to hang the whole browser requiring termination? Meaning, if we figure out exactly what Youtube (and select other sites?) calls/does then one could entice someone to a website, display a message "freeze", and suddenly their browser stops working.
Youtube was working good enough just a few weeks ago, and my speed hasn't apparently decreased. By selecting different useragent strings, youtube will bring up the main display and allow searches. Sometimes when selecting it's tab, then trying to go to another one, there is a brief delay, but playing I have not got to work without halting the browser. Except, once you find out the "watch?v=" string, change it to "/embed/" and it will play just fine (that is, as ever "fine" for me). So the actual playing will still work at speeds less than 1MB/s.

slownet

Re: Youtube vs. slow network connections on Pale Moon

Unread post by slownet » 2021-04-30, 16:01

As an additional observation to low CPU usage, there is little to no internet activity while the browser hangs.

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Re: Youtube vs. slow network connections on Pale Moon

Unread post by Moonchild » 2021-04-30, 16:13

In other words: these observations just underline that these are deliberate actions by Google to ward off alternative browsers.
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slownet

Re: Youtube vs. slow network connections on Pale Moon

Unread post by slownet » 2021-04-30, 16:19

Moonchild wrote:
2021-04-30, 16:13
In other words: these observations just underline that these are deliberate actions by Google to ward off alternative browsers.
While it may be true Google wishes to ward off alternative browsers, how could it be possible for them to hang the whole browser? For if they are intentionally doing it, then that would mean others could, too.

[PCMartin]

Re: Youtube vs. slow network connections on Pale Moon

Unread post by [PCMartin] » 2021-04-30, 19:38

slownet wrote:
2021-04-30, 16:19
While it may be true Google wishes to ward off alternative browsers, how could it be possible for them to hang the whole browser? For if they are intentionally doing it, then that would mean others could, too.
Alphabet/Google is unique in that it owns both a number of dominant services (YouTube, Google Search, Gmail, Google Maps) and a dominant browser that serves as a user-profiling and -tracking engine (Google Chrome). I can't think of any "others" who have comparable means and motive to ward off alternative browsers.

As for how it is possible for anyone to hang the whole browser, well, I'm technically illiterate, but from what Moonchild and others have written elsewhere, if a site is coded for multi-process browsers and assumes that closing its tab will kill the tab's process and take everything the tab has spawned along with it, hang-inducing orphaned zombie garbage can accumulate in single-process browsers, where the "tab's process" doesn't get killed until the entire browser's process is killed (by exiting or restarting). Within the limits of my understanding, my own experience with YouTube in Pale Moon seems to confirm this hypothesis.

slownet

Re: Youtube vs. slow network connections on Pale Moon

Unread post by slownet » 2021-05-01, 00:04

Don't know if this is relevant, but sometimes it recovers and this time it gave the following:

Code: Select all

A script on this page may be busy, or it may have stopped responding. You can stop the script now, open the script in the debugger, or let the script continue.

Script: https://www.youtube.com/s/desk…ymer.vflset/desktop_polymer.js:707
I tried the debugger, but then it hung again.

slownet

Re: Youtube vs. slow network connections on Pale Moon

Unread post by slownet » 2021-05-06, 16:24

I downloaded and tried Basilisk tarball with no improvement.

I tried Konqueror. In KHTML mode, it only lists the blank spacers youtube has.
But it will play in Webkit mode.

I tried Otter browser and it does play. However, the lower quality of the browser could only be reduced to 360p. And it appeared to buffer the whole video (7mins) I selected.

I tried the Falkon browser, which allowed the lower limit to be put down to 144p, and it did not buffer the whole video.

I tried Palemoon 29.1.1 on a laptop and it played the video.

So, it appears my internet connection is able to play youtube videos (regardless of a continuous experience), my computer is able to play youtube, but when I use Palemoon 29.2.0 on my computer, it hangs when playing youtube.

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Re: Youtube vs. slow network connections on Pale Moon

Unread post by Lunokhod » 2021-05-08, 01:21

This isn't a well researched observation, but I have reason to suspect Chromium may (sometimes at least) put entire videos in it's cache on the HDD (or temporarily save them, as I found some short videos doing file recovery which I thought came from past Chromium use), which Pale Moon doesn't do. Otter is based on Chromium. There's something called freetube which is a desktop app designed to play YouTube videos which might possibly help but obviously doesn't fix anything with Pale Moon.
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slownet

Re: Youtube vs. slow network connections on Pale Moon

Unread post by slownet » 2021-07-28, 22:06

I created a new profile under 29.3.0, and while a youtube video did play for awhile, it hung the browser, stopped playing and I had to terminate the browser.

slownet

Re: Youtube vs. slow network connections on Pale Moon

Unread post by slownet » 2021-08-23, 17:19

I tested again on 29.4.0.1 with same results requiring termination.
Also, sometimes on other sites, it hangs for more than a brief moment, but does eventually recover.

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Re: Youtube vs. slow network connections on Pale Moon

Unread post by JoeyG » 2021-08-23, 20:57

Just out of interest, have you tried Invidious?
https://yewtu.be/feed/popular
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Re: Youtube vs. slow network connections on Pale Moon

Unread post by Goodydino » 2021-08-23, 21:39

JoeyG wrote:
2021-08-23, 20:57
Just out of interest, have you tried Invidious?
https://yewtu.be/feed/popular
I have found that old TV programs which work fine with YouTube will not load on yewtu.be. Adventure game walkthroughs are fine, however.

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Re: Youtube vs. slow network connections on Pale Moon

Unread post by JoeyG » 2021-08-23, 22:05

Goodydino wrote:
2021-08-23, 21:39
... I have found that old TV programs which work fine with YouTube will not load on yewtu.be. Adventure game walkthroughs are fine, however.
I just tried https://yewtu.be/watch?v=6G3nuGSr4Bs , which is an eight-year-old upload of the ancient tv show "The Honeymooners". It worked fine.

Your mileage may vary.
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slownet

Re: Youtube vs. slow network connections on Pale Moon

Unread post by slownet » 2021-08-23, 22:57

I have tried it on several different videos on Invidious and they seem to work fine. And even though it wouldn't allow me to reduce the quality down, it still played. So it's not because I have a slow connection that Pale Moon cannot play videos. It has something to do with youtube's web page. And I suspect it has something to do with youtube browser sniffing and responding in a certain way that causes the browser to hang since I get varying results if I change my useragent string. Browsers shouldn't hang just because you go to a bad website. It could display it poorly or fail to display it, but shouldn't hang.

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Re: Youtube vs. slow network connections on Pale Moon

Unread post by JoeyG » 2021-08-24, 00:10

slownet wrote:
2021-08-23, 22:57
... Browsers shouldn't hang just because you go to a bad website. It could display it poorly or fail to display it, but shouldn't hang.
I have used Pale Moon for a few years, and it's my default browser. Having written this, I would definitely take exception at being called a "fanboy".

However, having read through threads here in the Forum whose gravamen is similar to yours - especially addressing YouTube issues - I've come to accept that problematic scripting can actually "defeat" the programmer's best efforts.

The best example I can offer is the Fidelity.com website. Late last year, no matter what I did, the site suddenly became unusable, hanging consistently due to a script being busy, i.e. "uncooperative" ;) .

I finally tried using a vanilla Pale Moon profile, and it worked; it worked badly, but it worked. Somehow I noticed that I was using a beta version of the site, and so I flipped the switch to the "normal" version. I then went back to my normal Pale Moon profile with dozens of add-ons. The site now worked, as we say, slicker'n snot.

I hope my example makes a bit of sense. Furthermore, I'd add here that Moonchild and the rest of the team don't need a computer know-nothing like me to defend them.

My point is that in my opinion, your contention that "Browsers shouldn't hang just because you go to a bad website. It could display it poorly or fail to display it, but shouldn't hang" manifests unrealistic expectations.

Malicious, uncontrollable serial offenders like You Tube appear to make a concerted effort to break Pale Moon. I don't think this is paranoia; it seems to be an accurate description of the state of play.
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