Storm Prediction Center (SPC) website is lagging when loading

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Tennie
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Storm Prediction Center (SPC) website is lagging when loading

Unread post by Tennie » 2023-11-10, 22:19

So, I tend to check the website of the Storm Prediction Center (SPC) (https://www.spc.noaa.gov/) on a fairly regular basis (I'm a self-admitted weather geek :geek: ). Prior to a couple months or so ago, it would load fairly quickly (as in about a few seconds with minimal lag). However, around a couple months ago it began behaving strangely:

When the site initially loads, the entire browser slows down dramatically, and remains that way for around 90 seconds (give or take), forcing my CPU to its maximum frequency (though, strangely, not maximum usage) during that time. I have used the logger provided by the uMatrix extension to time it and see roughly what's going on. It seems that there's a lot of elements that, for reasons I've been unable to discern (at least from my plebian-level knowledge of how browsers work, anyway), have started loading more slowly than they previously did.

I did a number of things to at least determine what is not a factor in this. I tried disabling my extensions and rebooting the computer (and not just the typical "Shut Down" sequence of Windows 10, my PC's OS, but a restart that skips Win10's "fast startup" mode and does a full reboot), but that didn't do anything, so it seems that none of the extensions have anything to do with it. I installed several patches when they came out, in an attempt to see whether that would help (again, no dice).

For comparison, I opened up the webpage in Google Chrome (the latest version of it), and it fully loaded in less than ten seconds, which suggests to me that there's something (though I admittedly don't know what) that's causing Pale Moon to behave abnormally with this website.

For the record, I'm on Windows 10 (64-bit Home Edition), and my version of Pale Moon (as of this post) is Version 32.5.0 (32-bit).

I would greatly appreciate it if it could be investigated, in an attempt to figure out what's going on and try to fix it. Please respond with whatever you are able to find, or if you need any additional information. In the latter case, I'll try to provide what I can, though I admittedly cannot guarantee that I'll be able to provide everything.
Last edited by Tennie on 2023-11-11, 02:37, edited 1 time in total.

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ron_1
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Re: Storm Prediction Center (SPC) website is lagging when loading

Unread post by ron_1 » 2023-11-10, 22:58

The link loads for me in a snap with no lagging. This is with uBlock Origin enabled as an advanced user and blocking 3rd-party scripts. When I disable uBo, I get slow loading and page lagging, as you say. So in my non-expert opinion, it seems to be an errant script causing the problem.

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Moonchild
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Re: Storm Prediction Center (SPC) website is lagging when loading

Unread post by Moonchild » 2023-11-10, 23:40

Loads fast for me with ABL. I checked what had been blocked and the only thing I saw being blocked is Google analytics/tag manager (which should not have any discernible impact) so it's a bit of a mystery?
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ron_1
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Re: Storm Prediction Center (SPC) website is lagging when loading

Unread post by ron_1 » 2023-11-11, 01:45

Here are two screenshots, the first what uBo blocks (in red). The second what comes through when uBo is turned off for this site. This is just a guess, but since Facebook runs like crap in Pale Moon I'd guess the problem is with fbcdn.net and/or facebook.com. (The bigger question in my mind is why a government agency's website such as NOAA [The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] has 3rd party scripts to Facebook?)
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Tennie
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Re: Storm Prediction Center (SPC) website is lagging when loading

Unread post by Tennie » 2023-11-11, 02:35

ron_1 wrote:
2023-11-11, 01:45
Here are two screenshots, the first what uBo blocks (in red). The second what comes through when uBo is turned off for this site. This is just a guess, but since Facebook runs like crap in Pale Moon I'd guess the problem is with fbcdn.net and/or facebook.com. (The bigger question in my mind is why a government agency's website such as NOAA [The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] has 3rd party scripts to Facebook?)

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After taking a look at the images in your post, I decided to see whether blocking third-party scripts (or at least some of them) would help. Sure enough, doing a blanket block of all such scripts on the SPC site made it load much master than it had been. So I decided to dig a little deeper and try to find out which scripts in particular were causing the issues.

It took some time and experimenting around with uBlock Origins, but I ultimately figured out that it seemed to be the Twitter-related scripts that seemed to be causing the issue: When I set uBO to block Twitter scripts in particular (and no other scripts, mind), the SPC website loaded within seconds. As such, I would suggest that the Twitter scripts be looked into to find out why they were causing issues with Pale Moon, and what could be done to handle those issues.

I just thought I'd give you guys an update.