NOF 12.3 slow to change pages

[Ron Reznick]

[sigh]

That was incredibly helpful, Franko. Yes, Windows is bloated, but the fact remains that without changing anything at all in the OS or anything other than applying the .3 update, NOF12 started becoming a nightmare, exhibiting glacial characteristics when switching tabs or opening pages and locking up frequently. Reverting to 12.0 cleared the problem, but I lost a day of work and am back to the issues which prompted the update. I ran into other problems when I updated to .1 quite a while ago, and had to revert then too, so I am used to the workflow issues of 12.0 as I have hundreds of hours of experience with them, but it would be nice to have them gone... assuming that I don't induce issues that make it impossible to work.

[Joe Rotello]

On 4/24/2012 1:01 PM, Ron Reznick wrote:
> After updating to NOF 12 update 3, I have noticed that it takes quite a
> long time to switch pages from one tab to another. The system has 4GB of
> RAM and two fast processors, and prior to updating the software, it took
> about 5-15 seconds to change to a page with a lot of images and text.
> Now, when changing to a page with only a few images, a table and a
> little text (I am working on 20 new pages which were just laid out with
> the navigation buttons and basic elements), I have found that while
> sometimes it changes rapidly, sometimes it can take 90 sec. to two
> minutes to change pages, and sometimes the program locks up completely.
> The update took care of a few items that were costing me time, but this
> issue will probably require that I remove and reinstall the software so
> I can get back to work if you do not have a solution.
>
> Please let me know... and thanks for taking the time.
>
> Ron Reznick
> www.digital-images.net
>
>

Much of the unmitigated semi-disaster is in IE 9, and partially in NOF
12, but the latter product to a lesser degree.

Increasingly, IE 9 is causing manifold headaches as MS is still trying
to dictate their standards and ways-and-means of doing browser innards
that they have done nearly since the first iteration of IE.

As far as NOF 12 specific problems:

Also, many of us are at our ropes end with NOF 12.

Of COURSE, we realize that even though it IS true that no web-tool can
be or should be all things to all people, NOF 9, 10, 11 and now 12 were
and still are replete with hidden problems and also options and
components that simply do NOT work right, some not at all.

There is no real support, as no one speaks a straight tongue as they
used to, and "NOF Europe" has become our last refuge.

For one, and I am sure we speak for many NOF users:

We are so very sorry that we bought full versions or upgrades of NOF 12,
and even more sorry that we recommended NOF for the past 12 versions or
so, back to the very week that Fusion's original team split off from
Apple and Mac programming and took NOF to Windows with the .8 versions.

We have lost a great many weeks and now many months of planning, of
work, many thousands of near worthless U.S. dollars and have in some
cases had to refund to our own clients.

Bottom line is the same as stated above:

Much of the unmitigated semi-disaster is in IE 9, and partially in NOF
12, but the latter product to a lesser degree.

Joe

[Ron Reznick]

Without making any changes to the OS, and only after the update to 12.3, these issues arose. Reverting to 12.0 removed these problems (although it cost time to reset the software and rebuild the lost work).

Microsoft does build ever more bloated software, adding unnecessary "cutesy" elements and making changes for the sake of making the OS look 'cooler'. Often, they cause numerous problems that keep a lot of users from upgrading (Vista is a good example). Regardless, this issue is with the update, not the OS.

Ron Reznick
www.digital-images.net

[Ron Reznick]

It seems that all I received from this was a few well-meaning maybes and a discourse on both Microsoft and the current management policies of the NOF team. [sigh]

Has nobody here ever run into this and gotten a solution... or has everyone reverted to 12.0 or just put up with it?

Ron Reznick
www.digital-images.net

[Allison Moore]

The number of active fonts may be a factor. The official line from MS is
that active fonts don't affect the way applications run. That has not
been my experience in either XP or Win7. I have several applications
that are very definitely affected when the number of active fonts goes
over 200.

With NOF12, when the number of active fonts is over 200, text editing
becomes impossibly slow. I do see other slowdowns from time to time.
While my experience is that NOF12 is clearly slower than previous
versions — and, even when the fonts are not at issue, it can creep — I
have to admit that Win7 64bit is frequently slower than I expect it to be.

OTOH, as for it being the result of support for legacy apps, I have to
say that I depend on support for legacy apps, because there is no
acceptable replacement for some key apps that I depend on. I didn't move
to Win7 by choice, and I still have to get my work done. It's all very
well to say "use something hip and new", but frequently that's not an
option.

Allison

On 5/1/2012 8:05 AM, Ron Reznick wrote:
> It seems that all I received from this was a few well-meaning maybes and
> a discourse on both Microsoft and the current management policies of the
> NOF team. [sigh]
>
> Has nobody here ever run into this and gotten a solution... or has
> everyone reverted to 12.0 or just put up with it?
>
> Ron Reznick
> www.digital-images.net
>
>

[franko]

I have over 1,000 fonts installed on my system and I don't have any problem with text editing. OTOH, I usually bring all text into (and write text in) TextPad and only do small edits in NoF.

I run NoF versions 8, 10, 11 and 12 on two machines, a sony laptop and a custom built workstation. I have not seen any of the issues regarding slow editing, crashes, etc. But then, I exercise discipline in storage of web site assets and don't pull them in from all over the place (a process that is fraught with danger).

Ron, my comments regarding MS were simply to point out that people (especially newbies) here are quick to blame NoF when the issue is usually either 1) bad IT practices, 2) conflicting applications [such as IE9] and 3) the OS itself. I have a number of applications that perform much worse than does NoF.

On your specific problem, I haven't experienced it and, in fact, regard update #3 as being the update that finally made NoF 12 ready for use on production sites.

[Ron Reznick]

Franko, I have attempted to work with NOF 12.3 twice now, and have had the same problem (as stated earlier). There were about 160 active fonts on the system (out of about 930), and many were not necessary at the moment, so I turned them off until I need to do a layout with them again. Still, the work I am doing is page-intensive and text-intensive, and I cannot spend minutes every time I switch or have the program lock up as often as it has. The section I just completed on Indian Lands and Anasazi Sites had quite a bit of text work, and the index pages for each section required a few preview images from each page within the section (and the accompanying captions). Switching back and forth was painful... with several crashes. I simply reverted again, and I'll just deal with 12.0 for a while. I haven't got time for this.

Thanks for the time, fellows. I appreciate it.

Ron Reznick
www.digital-images.net

[Zzyvko]

IMHO - Though it is true that Windows has a lot of non-OS programming (e.g. error detection and auto-fixing) the stated speed problem was non-existent in earlier versions of NOF running on Windows 7. While I have the 64 bit version of Windows 7-64 running on a ThinkPad T510 (8GB RAM), I came back to NOF after having used a much earlier version (under the IBM umbrella) years ago. I downloaded the free version and was amazed at how NOF has been improved despite the many problems with the companies selling it. It had NO speed problems! Then I bought version XII (it took them 5 weeks to mail the disk to me!) and the speed was a slight degeneration but still tollerable. Then I received an update and the speed was no more. Same computer, same 'hated' Windows 7-64 and same user. I, too, found 'tech support' at the company completely unresponsive other than to refer me to this board and that was excellent advice. There is better support here than they could ever make available to us. But we cannot change the program and they don't care. I re-installed the NOF from the CD I received and it is running fine; not as well as the free version but I am sure that there are problems I don't know about if I were to go back to the free version. I still feel that the concepts pioneered by NOF are the best and there is nothing out there than can approach NOF in ease of use as well as efficient design (forgetting 'speed').