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FireFox and the Visual Studio Web Server = Snail’s pace?


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Has anybody else noticed that when you use FireFox with the internal Visual Studio Web Server everything comes to a screeching halt? This is only a problem with this particular combination on my system. When I run through IIS there’s no such problem. When I use the VS Web Server with IE it also runs faster (although still pretty sluggish compared to running IIS).

 

It’s so slow in fact that during testing of AJAX requests it’s not uncommon for simultaneous callbacks to time out (which is otherwise very rare in my dev environment).

 

Anybody seeing the same thing? And more importantly any idea what could be causing this? FireFox otherwise seems to be pretty fast after some tuning of the default network settings. But for use in combination with the VS server it’s just annoyingly slow.

 

Blah… not a big deal since I use IIS anyway in most cases – but I usually do a  last test for various tools to ensure they run out of the box and this keeps coming up. I seem to remember similar issues for a while all the way back to running on XP last year.

Posted in Visual Studio  

The Voices of Reason


 

Bertrand Le Roy
January 22, 2007

# re: FireFox and the Visual Studio Web Server = Snail’s pace?

Nope. I use the VWD server all the time (on my Vista laptop) and test in Firefox, no problem there. There must be some weird config on your machine. Did you try to repro on other machines?
(by the way, it would be really nice to inhibit the autocomplete on the captcha textbox...)

Steve
January 22, 2007

# re: FireFox and the Visual Studio Web Server = Snail’s pace?

As far as I've been able to tell, it's because VSWD responds differently than IIS, and that causes local resources not to be cached. I don't know what part of the response is missing, but I've noticed that Firefox continuallly loads all JS, IMG, etc. files on each page hit. (But IE doesn't.) Large resources could explain your slowdown. I'll keep an eye out here to see if someone has a fix...

This might not explain why callbacks are failing, though?

(BTW I used FireBug to determine the cause of the slowdown - really recommend it as a profiling tool)

Rick Strahl
January 22, 2007

# re: FireFox and the Visual Studio Web Server = Snail’s pace?

Bertrand - no haven't had a chance to. Currently don't have another box with VS installed on it.

Steve, yeah I looked at Firebug before. At first I thought it'd be something related to NTLM security which would account for the difference, but it's not adding the negioating headers so that's not it.

BTW, I'm not sure if FireBug is reporting the network traffic correctly - I think it shows all content loaded regardless of whether it was cached or not so it *looks* like firefox is reloading everything one every hit. I haven't been able to tell cached content from non-cached content. I was confused by that actually this weekend as I was working on a module that's feeding GZip content and FireFox kept showing the content being reloaded, while the Web app in fact wasn't firing again (ie. it was cached in the browser).

scottgu
January 22, 2007

# re: FireFox and the Visual Studio Web Server = Snail’s pace?

I've heard of issues with FireFox handling localhost oddly in some configurations (this is true for FireFox 1.5 and 2.0). I don't think this is VSWD specific - I've heard of other people complain with it using Apache as well.

Nicholas
January 22, 2007

# re: FireFox and the Visual Studio Web Server = Snail’s pace?

Rick,

I have similiar problems every now and then... figured it was just me. Hah.

Lorenzo Bolognini
January 23, 2007

# re: FireFox and the Visual Studio Web Server = Snail’s pace?

Try disabling ffox IPV6 support and tweaking maxrequests through about:config

John Walker
January 23, 2007

# re: FireFox and the Visual Studio Web Server = Snail’s pace?

Rick,

Could it be the Firebug extension you recently wrote about? Curious.

Runi Thomsen
January 24, 2007

# re: FireFox and the Visual Studio Web Server = Snail’s pace?

Yes, I have the same issue. Firefox an Casini (VS Web Server) simply dont fit. I really dont get it and I thought that it was only me. If you find an awnser, I would love to hear it.

Mike Ormond
January 31, 2007

# re: FireFox and the Visual Studio Web Server = Snail’s pace?

Rick, I'm seeing the same issue on my machine so I pinged Bertrand a mail last night. It may well be a config issue but I've seen it on more than one machine and through multiple rebuilds. They're going to look into it and I can offer a repro machine so hopefully we can get to the bottom of it. Mike

nhlpens66
February 01, 2007

# re: FireFox and the Visual Studio Web Server = Snail’s pace?

Yes it is slooow. How does one instruct Visual Studio to launch IE instead of Firefox for debugging web apps and ASP.Net config?

I have IE 7 now and have set it to be my default browser. Visual Studio is totally ignoring that fact. I have to "View in IE". This doesn't work in ASP.Net config though. It thinks the session has timed out.

FF can display like 13 Error Consoles once the snail recovers from whatever it was doing. FF needs a pop-up blocker just for itself!

Jim

Rick Strahl
February 01, 2007

# re: FireFox and the Visual Studio Web Server = Snail’s pace?

Right click on Open With... over an ASPX page, then set the default browser there. Whatever is set there becomes your default browser that opens with View in Browser.

Thomas Hansen
February 16, 2007

# re: FireFox and the Visual Studio Web Server = Snail’s pace?

I'VE FIGURED IT OUT!! :)
And it TOOK me QUITE a WHILE!!

Anyway, here's the solution...
Open FF, type about:config into the adress bar, filter on "v6" (this should easily find the ipv6 setting)
Right click it and choose "toggle" and the FOX is back in business again... :)

.t

--
http://ajaxwidgets.com

Mark
February 16, 2007

# re: FireFox and the Visual Studio Web Server = Snail’s pace?

The about:config tweak fixed it for me - cheers.

marshall
May 14, 2007

# re: FireFox and the Visual Studio Web Server = Snail’s pace?

good hint. lame that you have to tweak FF to fix this however :)

Jason Lavigne
June 06, 2007

# re: FireFox and the Visual Studio Web Server = Snail’s pace?

MUCH BETTER, thanks Thomas, worked like a charm.

Robert Woods
June 29, 2007

# re: FireFox and the Visual Studio Web Server = Snail’s pace?

Thanks for the hint! I have been working so slowly for so long with FireFox I'm not sure what I'll do with all my extra time!

ZeroOne
July 31, 2007

# re: FireFox and the Visual Studio Web Server = Snail’s pace?

Thanks for the great advise, FF is working faster than it initially was!

Marty
August 28, 2007

# re: FireFox and the Visual Studio Web Server = Snail’s pace?

Thank you, Thomas Hansen! Works great after setting network.dns.disableIPv6 to true! What a relief!

Pete
December 03, 2007

# re: FireFox and the Visual Studio Web Server = Snail’s pace?

Hey Thomas - cheers for that, this problem was driving me nuts. Works great now!

Piotr
July 16, 2008

# re: FireFox and the Visual Studio Web Server = Snail’s pace?

Had the same problem, fix from Thomas worked like a charm. Thanks a lot!

Michael Baldry
October 13, 2008

# re: FireFox and the Visual Studio Web Server = Snail’s pace?

wow, thats really amazing. i just thought the server was slow. thanks very much :)

Peter Sinke
December 29, 2008

# re: FireFox and the Visual Studio Web Server = Snail’s pace?

Excellent. Works like a charm. Thanks Lorenzo Bolognini (who posted this solution before Thomas did :) )

Jon
May 12, 2009

# re: FireFox and the Visual Studio Web Server = Snail’s pace?

I've spent months grinding along with FF! Thanks!

Simon
June 03, 2009

# re: FireFox and the Visual Studio Web Server = Snail’s pace?

Finally, FF works with VWD at a useful speed! Saved me about 2 hours a day waiting for Refresh while positioning my divs! :) Thanks!

Clay
November 24, 2009

# re: FireFox and the Visual Studio Web Server = Snail’s pace?

well done on v6 tweak!

new build = driving me nuts

Alan
February 03, 2010

# re: FireFox and the Visual Studio Web Server = Snail’s pace?

After months of dealing with this issue and having to switch between IE and Firefox while testing vs debugging (much prefer firebug for debugging), I thank you.

John
February 26, 2010

# re: FireFox and the Visual Studio Web Server = Snail’s pace?

Awesome, good work!

Mr.G
May 26, 2010

# re: FireFox and the Visual Studio Web Server = Snail’s pace?

Address bar -> about:config -> v6 - right-click TOGGLE to TRUE did the trick!

Fantastic! Well done!

Josh
September 09, 2010

# re: FireFox and the Visual Studio Web Server = Snail’s pace?

Another fix for me was to simply use 127.0.0.1 (instead of localhost). This is probably working around the same ip v6 issue listed above (but no config changes).

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