Brent, thanks for reporting this. I'm not sure what's causing it to be slow (it could be the number of tasks or the Smart List, or something entirely different), but we'll do some testing here and see if we can determine what might be causing task completion to be slow. Are you using a PC or a Mac?

As for deleting completed repeating tasks, unfortunately I don't think there's an easy way to do that right now without stopping the series from repeating -- sorry!

Emily,

I'm using a PC.

Thanks for offering to investigate this, and let me know if I can be of any assitance while you do so.

Brent, we've made some changes that should (hopefully!) improve the speed -- would you be able to try this again and let us know what happens? Thanks!

Hi Emily,

I have good news and bad news.

The good news is that I am no longer getting the "script on this page is busy" message - or any other message - when I complete a task. I've tested completing
- 1 or 2 tasks together about a dozen different times;
- 10 - 20 tasks together five different times;
- 34 tasks together one time;
and none of these resulted in the message. So I am definitely seeing an improvement here.

The bad news is that I have noticed a couple of new symptoms (at least I think they are new, although I am not positive they started exactly when this change was introduced).

I use Firefox in tabbed mode, and what I have noticed is that, when RTM is running in one tab, then, exactly every 2 minutes, Firefox "freezes" for about 6 seconds, even I am viewing a non-RTM tab. For instance, if I am scrolling through Google search results, the scrolling will stop for 6 seconds, then catch up. As I was typing this, the characters stopped being echoed for 6 seconds, then caught up.

The freezing does not affect applications other than Firefox, and does not happen when RTM is not running. Also, when I started and stopped RTM several times, I found this caused the exact time of the freeze to change (for example, from starting at 47 seconds into every 2nd minute, to starting at 24 seconds into every second minute). I suspect that it is tied to the moment when RTM starts up.

Another thing I have noticed is that RTM has not been starting "cleanly". After saying "Loading" for 10 seconds or so, it says "There was a problem reaching the server. Are you connected to the internet? (rtm.preload failed)." If I wait another 10-15 seconds or so, my default task list then does get displayed. This seems to happen every time. It did not happen, at least not with this regularity, before the recent change was made.

I do confess to asking a lot of RTM at startup. My default list is a smartlist, which searches about 20 lists, and filters them by due date, producing a list of about 200 tasks.

Thank you again for looking into these issues, and again, let me know if I can help.

Emily,

I'm afraid I have stumbled on an even more serious symptom. This is something I had noticed happening in the few days prior to my last post, but I didn't suspect that it had anything to do with RTM, so I didn't mention it to you. But it occured to me, after my last post, that perhaps this was related to the 6-second freeze, and upon testing, I've found that to be the case.

The symptom is that, during the 6-second freeze, if I attempt to minimize the Firefox window, the window is not only minimized, but disappears from the taskbar. That is, when you look at your screen, it looks like Firefox is not running. However, it actually still is, but to see it you have to use the Windows "Task Manager" and tell it to "switch to" Firefox. This restores the Firefox window back to normal.

Before I realized that the Firefox windows were actually still open, I assumed that I had accidentally clicked the "X" to close the window instead of the "underscore" to minimize it. But it happened so frequently that I started being very careful about what I clicked on when attempting to minimize Firefox, and came to find that I was actually clicking the underscore, and yet the window was disappearing.

One time recently, my system was running very sluggishly, and freezing quite frequently (more than 6 seconds every two minutes). I now think that was because I had several "hidden" instances of Firefox (each including an RTM tab) running simultaneously, each imposing its own 6-second freeze on my Firefox window.

OK, thanks again for your attention.

Brent, thanks for all these details. It's difficult to know what may have caused this to happen in the first place -- we're looking into what's causing the 6 second delays.

In the meantime, can you please make sure that you've closed all instances of Firefox, and then clear your cache? After this, can you open up the site again and take note of any issues or freezes that you experience?

Also worth checking -- do you typically have other web applications open at the same time as RTM, and do you have any Firefox extensions installed? It may be a combination that's causing this, so we'd love to check out that possibility too. Thanks!

Emily,

I only know how to clear my cache from within Firefox, while it is running (by doing "Tools / Clear Private Data", with the "cache" box checked). Did you want me to somehow clear cache while Firefox is not running? If so, please elaborate on how.

What I have done is as follows: I closed all Firefox instances (there was only one running), started Firefox again, did a "Clear Private Data", closed it again, started it again, and ran RTM. The freeze still happens as reported before, with only an RTM tab open in Firefox.

I typically do have gmail running in one tab while RTM is running in another, but, as noted above, the freeze happens even when gmail isn't running. I do not usuallly have any other web applications running.

I do however, have several extensions (sorry!). These are as follows:

- Google Toolbar for Firefox
- Evernote Web Clipper
- AI Roboform Toolbar for Firefox
- Gmail Manager
- Mozilla Calendar
- Google Safe Browsing
- Google Web Comments
- Google Suggest
- Gmail Notifier
- Shazou
- Scrapbook
- Answers
- McAfee SiteAdvisor

Let me know if you would like me to disable or uninstall all of these for testing purposes. I really appreciate all the attention you are devoting to this problem.

Brent/Emily

I used to see a Firefox window disappearing from my taskbar as well. The window was my home window and it had continuously open tabs to Gmail and Bloglines plus a couple of other frequently used tabs.

I used "Bring to Front" in Task Manager to resurrect the window.

I have not seen the problem since I switched to Google Personalized Home Page with Google Mail, Google Calendar, Google Reader, Google Weather and RTM gadgets.

I now open gadget links in new tabs when I need to work in the relevant tool and close of the tool when I am finished that task.

Firefox 2 cpu and memory resource usage has also reduced substantially with this change in practice.

Just a comment.

Brent, sorry for not being clear -- yes I did mean clearing the cache once you started Firefox again.

A quick way to test if one of the extensions is affecting this -- would you be able to start Firefox in safe mode? There should be an option for 'Mozilla Firefox (Safe Mode)' in your Start Menu.

Owyn, do you happen to have any of the same extensions as Brent installed? This would help us to narrow down and figure out which one/s might be affecting this.

(Of course, this issue might be completely unrelated to extensions, but it's good to rule it out :)

Emily,

I hadn't known about safe mode, but you're right, it is there. I have now tested in safe mode, and the freeze still occurs, as before.

One more piece of info that you might find useful - I have noticed that the duration of the freeze depends on which list I am in. In particular, I have a regular list of about 200 tasks, and when I'm in that list, the freeze lasts abouts 3 seconds. I also have a smartlist with about the same number of tasks, and when I'm in that list, the freeze lasts about 6 seconds. The smartlist includes a "dueBefore:now" qualifier.

I suspect RTM periodically stirs to see if it needs do any processing due to timing-related filters such as "dueBefore". If so, perhaps the "thinking" it does during this "stirring" might be related to the freeze?

Hmmm. Almost no match on extensions. However, I did have the Google Toolbar for Firefox installed at one point and removed it in the same time frame that I switched to the Google Personalized Home Page.

Installed extensions:
-Adblock Plus
-Chatzilla
-del.icio.us
-Dict
-DOM Inspector
-Google Notebook
-IE View Lite
-Page Zoom
-Talk Back

Brent and Owyn, thanks for these details.

Brent, so that we can try and reproduce your situation as much as possible, can I ask what kind of PC you're using? (Any specifications that you have would be useful.)

We're still working to track this issue down. Thanks!

Emily,

My computer is a Hewlett-Packard Pavilion laptop, model zd7269cl, and is about 2 years old. It is running Windows XP Media Center Edition Version 2002, Service Pack 2. It contains a Pentium 4 CPU, 3,20 GHz, with 512 MB of RAM.

Thanks for continuing to work on this.

Emily,

I have some more data for you. I have another computer at home, which I don't use very often. It is a different model, and several years older, than the one I usually use. I have never tried to run RTM on it, but I did so just now as a test. I see the same freeze happening there.

I don't know how much capability you have to get into user's accounts, but it is OK with me if you would like to masquerade as me in RTM to see if you see the problem too. All one needs to do is display the list I usually use (called "Brent (Now)") and scroll the scroll bar up and down continuously for two minutes.

If you want to do this, but need to know my RTM password, let me know and I'll send it to you via email.

Brent, thanks for letting us know. I think we have all the info we need to fully investigate this (I'll let you know if I've forgotten anything :) so hopefully we'll be able to resolve this soon.

I have been experiencing several problems too. It's like the RTM feed in the Google homepage doesn't like RTM to be opened independently.

Even worse when I try to have Google homepage (with RTM feed), Google Calendar (w/ RTM feed) and RTM all open in 3 different tabs.

Brent, I think we've now solved the freezing issue, and made the lists (especially complex Smart Lists) load much more quickly. Would you mind trying again and see if it's improved now? Thanks!

Emily,

THANK YOU!!! The freeze is completely gone. I'm back to being an "All rtm, all the time" kind of guy now!

And my regular lists and smartlist are indeed loading quickly (usually within 5 seconds, and that is well within the bounds of acceptability to me).

I've noticed one thing today which I think has recently broken, though. When you enter text in the search box, and hit "return", rtm comes back saying "No results found", even though it should be finding tasks containing that text. I've found, though, that if you use the prefix "name:" in the search box, (the way the advanced search function does if you tell it to search using "has the words"), then it finds the appropriate tasks just fine. In other words, what I'm saying is that the regular search box, I think, used to automatically, behind the scenes, insert a "name:" prefix for the user by default, and now it seems to have stopped doing that.

Also - I do sometimes still see the "a script on this page is busy or may have stopped responding" message, which is what started this string. But, at least so far, it is happening much less frequently. It used to happen perhaps half the time when I swtiched between long lists, but today, I've only seen it a couple of times, and I've probably swtiched lists a hundred times, trying to get it to happen. I'll let you know if it gets bad enough to bother me again, but as of right now, it's probably not significant enough to warrant your attention.

Also, I'll just mention that I still sometimes see the "RTM not starting 'cleanly'" issue, which I mentioned as part of my post in this string on November 24. Starting RTM, and having it load my large default smartlist, takes about 30-40 seconds, and sometimes, during that time, I get the "rtm.preload failed" message, though sometimes I don't. But anyway, it eventually does succesfully load the list, so I don't really mind if this is never fixed. With RTM running as well as it is right now, I will tend to only start RTM once, when I boot, and leave it open 24x7 after that. So an "initial load" issue, especially one that clears itself up, is more of a curiosity than a problem.

Thanks again for the terrific support! I really can't imagine how you keep up with all you do!

Thank you, Emily. Under XP (sigh), it seems to handle my biggest list (1,100+ items) and my most complex smart lists with more snap, and for that I am grateful.

As an aside, many of my searches fail, and while I haven't given it the thought that Brent has, it's common enough that I usually use Firefox's text find rather than fight with RTM's search function these day. Anyway, Brent's on to something, I think with his search comment.

Have a great weekend; think about something besides RTM for most of it.

Oops, looks like we managed to introduce a bug while fixing the other bug! :) Thank you both for letting us know about this -- searching for task names should work correctly again now.

Brent, please do continue to let us know about any annoyances -- we'd love to try and make using RTM as fast and problem-free as possible :) We'd be happy to check out the loading speed issue too, and see if there's anything we can do to improve that -- can I ask what speed Internet connection you have?

Ran, thanks -- we'll try not to think about RTM too much :) Hope you have a great weekend too!

Emily,

Yes, you have fixed the searching for task names problem - it works fine (and fast!) now.

My download speed is about 1000 kbps. My upload speed is about 128 kbps.

Thanks again!