1.4.10b1->b7 (1.5.0) browser integration + new file tracking

[nefycee]

- Have you noticed it?
yes

- Is it bothering you?
A little bit

- How are you handling this?
with a click on the tabbles icon on the quick launch bar

- Do you typically use your windows maximized or not?
maximized

[Andrea]

- Have you noticed it?
yes

- Is it bothering you?
A little bit

- How are you handling this?
with a click on the tabbles icon on the quick launch bar

- Do you typically use your windows maximized or not?
maximized

forget about this... Maurizio fixed it within 6 mins
Thanks for feedback anyway!

[mrdna]

Ummmm.... Wow!

I've only had a chance to play with it for a little bit but it seriously rocks! A nice little side benefit is that it's saved in the db itself (as a link) rather than a url file on the drive. When Tabbles goes usb portable this feature will rock even harder.

Big time kudos folks.

[Andrea]

This post is a mix of "beta presentation" + a "what we're working for".

1.4.10b3 -> moving all the file tracking inside Tabbles.

The solution: we now track only file movements that are handled inside Tabbles - to be more precise where Tabbles is used to paste. The full story is in this blog post.

1) Download and install the .msi
(if this is the first time you install Tabbles, remember that you need the .net framework 3.5sp1)

yo!

[mrdna]

Seeing some serious mem/cpu usage again (still?). On the RAM usage side it looks like the number of files may have some effect - more files displayed, more RAM used. Number of tabbles has slight effect. CPU (dual-core 2.2g) gets hammered whenever Tabbles does anything.

By the numbers: Start up in the systray without opening the Tabbles Workspace is about 250M RAM. Open the program to the workspace and its 375M or so. Open a tabble with around 50 files associated is about 500M, more than 250 files is at minimum 700M up to 1G.

Also noticed that when you close Tabbles to the systray it doesn't give up the RAM it reserved so when you open Tabbles again it reserves more RAM. Got Tabbles using 1.4G of RAM by doing this open/close cycle a few times. It does seem to correct over time though and, for me, it generally settles to using about 800M-900M RAM. Yes, that if it's just sitting in the systray. Been keeping an eye on that for the last few days and the low I've seen was about 730M and the highest 990M, at the moment it's running 831. (I have to close it when I play EQ or I get slowdowns and weird effects.)

As far as the CPU getting hammered, I don't know if it's the re-draw itself, or the number crunching involved in opening/displaying the tabbles, files and tree, or both, but the CPU activity (max freq in Resource Mon) pegs at 100%. (May even -be- the reason I've seen 'hitching' in re-draws all this time, I dunno)

Anyways, thought Maurizio would want to know. Been a known thing since I began using Tabbles, but reserving over 800M is gettin a bit much...

[Andrea]

uh, thanks for the heads up! Looks like we have another memory leak... I'll make sure Maurizio has a look at it. Furthermore, we have a couple of new builds already, we could try uploading those... keep en eye here (I know you do anyway).

Cheers,

A.

[Maurizio]

Sorry for the problem mrdna.


While there are probably a few memory leaks, the numbers you report are so far from my experience that they need an explanation. Could you please tell me 1) how many tabbles do you have on the workspace (i.e. at "toplevel"), and 2) how much RAM do you have?

(the second question is relevant because the .net garbage collector tends to release memory only when running out of RAM)

I am suspecting that it is _tabble_ elements which are taking so much ram. Since I recall you have _many_ tabbles visible at once (because you don't use tabble nesting), then you have all those tabbles existing in memory at the same time, and this might be the reason why you experience huge memory usages. If that were true, then I could try to reduce the RAM used by each tabble element (by redesigning the graphics a bit and making some code tweaks). But I'm not sure I will succeed. .NET is per se a memory hog.

FYI, on my machine (with 4 GB ram), there is much less ram usage. One month ago or so I was indeed able to do what you say (make tabbles reach 900 MB by quickly opening and closing file windows); but lately, after the recent optimizations, I can't do that anymore. The ram usage starts at 100 MB, jumpt to 156 when opening the workspace, and then rarely gets above 210 MB.

[mrdna]

Actually I'm also running 4G RAM... In the workspace is about 400-500 Tabbles, but they don't seem to be the real problem since its not showing files. Mem usage at the workspace level is 350-400M (maybe 100-150M difference from startup in the systray), the RAM use goes up dramatically (it appears) when showing files (or shadow files, for that matter) like it's using RAM for each file entry or something. When I get into a tabble with a couple hundred files (doesn't matter much how many tabbles) -that's- when the RAM use rockets to 800-plus, 50 files or so, not so much rocket...

It could certainly be I'm missing some relationship between the displayed tabbles and files, or a previously opened tabble that's still in mem, but I tried to be careful in testing this before I posted because the numbers sure look high to me as well.

No big hairy problem for me at the moment, though I am worried that it could carry into the portable version and really be a pain on the machines at work which carry 1G RAM at best...

Anyways, just figured you would want to know. Will keep an eye on it and let you know if it changes.

regards,
mrdna

[Andrea]

Hello mrdna!

thanks for all your reports! You're definitely our beta-tester of the year - along with nefycee of course... -

We just baked and uploaded the 1.4.10b4, it should suck a bit less memory now.

One thing: with the .net framework the memory is managed automatically in a wannabe-smart-way (called the "garbage collector"), therefore if you have a lot of RAM (as in your case) the garbage collector will think "ok, so maybe I shouldn't worry too much and unload unused stuff"... on the other hand, if you have 1GB of RAM the garbage collector will think "holy crap, I need to clean up some memory now!", therefore the memory usage is supposed to be different on machines with different amount of RAM (E.g. on my 1GB netbook it takes up to 300MB, but once again we don't really care about people with less than 2GB of RAM cause if they can't spend 50$ on RAM they probably won't spend 30$ on Tabbles either, ain't it?).

P.S.: Maurizio is having nightmares with a bug that time to time makes Tabbles slow down enormously - this is very probably the bug that the reviewer from PC world was having and the reason why Tabbles looked slow to him. I'm talking about a sudden and massive slow dows which typically disappears after restarting Tabbles.
Did you ever experience this?

Thanks,

A + M

[mrdna]

Appreciate the explanation on the 'garbage collector'. Makes sense.

Yes, I have experienced some pretty heavy slowdowns off and on. (pretty sure I mentioned it a while back) Every once in a while, and it seems to be when Tabbles is drawing/displaying files, it will slow down to the point that it will take up to a second (or two in extremis) to display/draw the file in the file panel. When it happens the CPU max freq gets pegged and pagefile threads go up alot. Slows down the whole machine. Have found zero consistancy as to when or why. Maurizio have any ideas I can keep an eye for there?