Things that never worked right: Smooth scrolling

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Ever since it was introduced, the only thing smooth scrolling did was lag the machine. Nowadays most computers do have enough beef to make smooth scrolling actually smooth, but i still prefer the oldschool "choppy" scrolling, especially on something that's running on battery.

Here's why. On my laptop for example (dual-core Turion 2GHz, 2GB, 8400M GS 256MB), smooth scrolling takes up 20-25% CPU and up to 82% GPU. You've got to be $#*&&ing me!!! The CPU clocks itself to maximum speed with smooth scrolling, while it sits calmly at 800MHz with regular. That's wasted battery power there folks... And that's with the GPU running at full tilt, because if i apply the underclock settings for lowest temperature and longest battery life, smooth scrolling starts to lag! I don't even want to imagine how it works on weaker machines.

Smooth scrolling has been around for years folks, you'd think they managed to make it work properly till now, but... no. It remains on my "turn off at first sight" list.

[mockingbird]

Re: Things that never worked right: Smooth scrolling

Which browser? Which Operating System?

[kaboom]

Re: Things that never worked right: Smooth scrolling

Which one? Idiot Exploder, of course.

Yet another ass-kissing 'cute feature' from the 98/ME days...

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: Things that never worked right: Smooth scrolling

Which one? Idiot Exploder, of course.

It doesn't matter. It behaves the same in all Windows OS and all browsers because it's an OS issue not an application bug. Opera, Mozilla, IE... FYI the numbers i posted are from Opera, Windows 7 x64. I hardly use IE at all these days... but wait, we all use it everyday when we work with our folders, it's called Windows Explorer...

[mockingbird]

Re: Things that never worked right: Smooth scrolling

I always enable smooth scrolling in Firefox...

How do I check GPU performance hit? I want to see if you're right. How much do you score on HWACCEL test?

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: Things that never worked right: Smooth scrolling

How do I check GPU performance hit? I want to see if you're right.

I used GPU-Z, which shows GPU and video memory load on the more recent chips. Or you could just run some benchmarking software that allows windowed mode.

How much do you score on HWACCEL test?

First time i heard of it... Will report back tomorrow.

[lti]

Re: Things that never worked right: Smooth scrolling

What is smooth scrolling?

[mockingbird]

Re: Things that never worked right: Smooth scrolling

When you autoscroll or you use the wheel to scroll in your browser, there's either a "jerk scroll" mode where when you scroll, it skips a few lines down, or there is the "smooth scroll" mode, where the scrolling is fluid.

For a spreadsheet, I wouldn't want smooth scrolling, but for browsing, it's one of the first things I enable in Firefox on a new install.

[Uranium-235]

Re: Things that never worked right: Smooth scrolling

sometimes this has something to do with flash/high CSS sites. It smoothed out ALOT with firefox 10alpha 64-bit in my windows 7 i7 box, but it still had issues-it would sometimes start to lag just a little bit for a few seconds, but then continue smooth, even with higher flash environments

[mockingbird]

Re: Things that never worked right: Smooth scrolling

I also use 10 Alpha... on my laptop. For my main rig, in XP, I use 8.

Once you force enable all the acceleration in Firefox, it performs almost as well as IE 9... but not in Windows XP... Canvas acceleration doesn't work with XP, because XP doesn't have Direct2D acceleration or something like that... I didn't understand their explanation either.

[severach]

Re: Things that never worked right: Smooth scrolling

Firefox Smooth Scroll take a small bite out of my mobile Core 2. I always turn it off. I do not like it, Sam I am! I am constantly puzzled why designers intentionally hamstring fast computers with smooth scrolling and grow shrink effects. I want it to scroll so fast the screen shatters.

"Plus if you act now we'll throw in a speed reducer for just one penny!"

I also turn off all acceleration. It doesn't play nice with remote control.