Slow graphic movement in Layout mode

[rockman]

Newbie Question #2:

In Layout mode, if I click and drag a field it takes FM a long time to redraw the object making rearranging objects very tedious. I've seen other posts bemoaning this very slow screen refresh "feature". I can reproduce this effect in a brand new 1 table file with 1 field.

HOWEVER, when I create a database from a "FileMaker Template" (e.g. Contact Management)... In Layout mode, the field objects are refreshed with incredible speed when they are moved.

Mind you, this is on the same computer, same FM Pro 7, same session/time.

Please see my earlier post "slow radio buttons" for more intrigue.

Can you duplicate this effect? Do you have any thoughts on why this is happening?

Thanks,

Jeff

[Wim Decorte]

It must be something machine specific. On none of my main machines (XP and OSX) does it happen, nor on the machines of my clients...

Does applying the v2 updater change anything?

Make sure to report it back to FMI:

http://www.filemaker.com/company/product_problems.html

[DanBrill]

I too am experiencing the slowness in layout mode and on the relationship graph when dragging objects. (FM Dev 7v2 on XP pro). I've seen others complain too. I was hoping the patch would improve things, but not too much. (My machine isn't horribly slow in general. I also don't think its a good idea to develop on a machine that is vastly better than the average end user's machine -- it gives a false sense of what their reality will be like).

Has anyone come up with any way to improve the condition? The behavior with the FM Templates is strange indeed.

Dan

[The Shadow]

Dan,

Do you also see the templates are normal speed, while your files are slow? That wasn't clear to me.

[rockman]

Unfortunately, the v2 update does not solve the issue. I suspect that I can delete all of the tables and layout of a template and replace them with my own database structure and reap the rewards of the faster speed. I'll try that this weekend and post my results.

Thanks for your comments,

Jeff

[DanBrill]

Can't say -- haven't tried that yet. I'll be interested in seeing Jeff's results.

Dan

[rockman]

Well-- the plot thickens.

In trying to sort this out. At one point the template started to move slowly!

During a later session, the template was fast again and my original file was still slow. I deleted all the stock tables from the template and created new tables/fields/layouts and the file remained fast.

And then for an UNKNOWN reason, my original file (which was slow) suddenly showed fast layout redraws. Go figure! Now to make clear, the difference between fast and slow redraw is very great so I am sure something odd is going on.

Furthermore, the redraw speed is also involved in selecting radio buttons in the browse mode (you may have seen my post about radio buttons).

Right now I'm happy because my original file redraws quickly but I am still at a loss as to why it was slow initially and why it sped up later.

HTH somebody, sometime in the future,

Jeff

[rockman]

EUREKA!!!

Somebody call FileMaker!

I discovered the slow screen redraw bug!

It all depends on whether the window is MAXIMIZED or not.

If the window is MAXIMIZED, screen drawing is pathetically slow (such as moving field objects in Layout mode or selecting radio buttons in Browse mode).

If the window is NOT MAXIMIZED, screen drawing is lightening fast.

The reason I thought it had something to do with the template files is that they open as NOT MAXIMIZED while my original database was designed in MAXIMIZED mode.

Hope FileMaker is reading this and incorporating a fix in 7.3!

[kiwiora]

ooohh i'm off to test this. The whole slow drag this is.. excuse the pun.. such a drag!

[DanBrill]

Which window do you mean -- the database window within the FileMaker environment, or the FileMaker window within the windows envoronment?

I am seeing some difference, but it doesn't seem predictable....

I'll keep playing...

[DanBrill]

OK, if the inner database window is maximized and the FileMaker program window is floating on the desktop, performance is gretly improved. The smaller I make the FM window on the desktop, the better the performance. By the time I'm down to a 3 inch by 3 inch window, the performance is great. Completely impossible to use in this fashion, but the performance is there. Aparently with this little to redraw, performance is really good -- all the way back up to FM 6 levels. Arrgh!

So when is 7.0v3 due?

[DanBrill]

Also, dropping my monitor from 32bit to 16 bit color makes a huge difference in speed, but I can't actually see a color difference on the screen. Probably getting a screaming video card on my next computer would help too. (Not so easy to just get a new card as I'm using a laptop.)

Oh, and with this post, #400, I move from enthusiast to addict. But I can quit any time I want.

Thanks to everyone out there. I get a lot more help than I'll ever be able to give.

Dan

[The Shadow]

These symptoms make it sound like there is an off-screen memory map of the window.

How much ram does your video card have? That would have a drastic effect if the window didn't fit in it, I would think.

[DanBrill]

16MB of video card memory. See my edit to my post above regarding what I'm stuck with for the moment.

[The Shadow]

Yeah, that does seem a bit low. My laptop (2 months old?) has 128MB .

rockman, kiwiora - what about your video cards??

This reminds me, there was a post complaining about a similar slowness on the Cafe, when running at rather high screen resolutions - that would be the same problem then.

[DanBrill]

Yeah, and I do run at a pretty high resolution -- 1400 x 1050. This is the first time I've ever had problems with video sluggishness. Of course, mine sweeper is the extent of my gaming.

Well, a new machine is not too far away.

[kiwiora]

Mine's 64mb. I kinda lied in my other post I thought i had it sussed with speeding it up by just restoring and then manually resizing to large, but alas, as was suggested, the smaller the window (i.e 3x3) the faster she goes. 16bit does make it marginally faster.

It seriously drives me nuts.. nothing worse than a sloooooooow lag. I have a direct email to a guy in filemaker here who is an engineer so might email him directly and ask. The update doesn't appear to address the problem.

Speaking of which - is it just me, or has it made text on my layout with a size of 48 seem not as smoothed? all the 10/9pt is beautifully crystal clear, and yet anything in the range of around 30 - 60 gets a bit pixelated??

[kiwiora]

meanwhile... have any of you also noticed that if you have a radio button that it too is slow?

e.g i have a radio button to toggle a field between their postal or delivery address. After selecting whichever, it takes (i swear) a full couple of seconds to display not only the selection radio but the resulting calculation.

[Triodes]

Hi Guys,

Filemaker should not put a strain on your video cards. The memory and ramdacs are all very nice for games that run 60-100fps, but a desktop application with no changing data on the screen should not even require 32mb, let alone 128. If it does there is a (yet another) serious bug in FM.

I don't see why you can run office (large excel sheets, 10mb word docs etc) or even Photoshop with 100 layers of undo at lightning speeds but FM slows everything to a grinding halt with just a simple database table and two or three layouts (whoopty doo). This is a bug gentlemen, not a new set of features slowing things down.

Jim

[DanBrill]

That's a good point. I've done a fair amount of photoshopping on the same machine with no noticable degredation...

Lets hope 7v3 fixes this...

[kiwiora]

Well I got my response from filemaker engineer:

On the question of slowness of layout mode:

Some actions in Layout mode are, in my experience, slower in v7 than v6, however, not problematically so. I know of one or two instances where someone has experienced significant speed problems - these were related to incorrect or out of date video drivers.

I'll ask Tech Support to contact you to sort where the problem lies and help find a resolution.

But, as you say, if it's the driver, then how come photoshop etc are still at lightening speed and only FM7 is incurring the fault.

[Triodes]

Hi,

I don't see why FM is putting so much importance on video performance/drivers. This should be a non-issue for the kind of graphics they produce (lines and letters, wow).

An out of date driver seems like they are trying to weasel themselves out of another problem. I have a Radeon 9800Pro-128mb card with up-to-date drivers, not the slowest card out there, and it is still a lot slower than with FM6. I will believe their explanation that this slow-down is caused by a new way of graphics rendering, but the finger should not be pointed at the hardware/drivers.

As you also noticed, photoshop is working at it's normal pace. Keep in mind that if you edit the pics on yur screen, copies are kept in memory of each instance of that picture. Hence a 2MB jpeg with 6 changes would imply 12mb of memory being used just for this picture. But this is not video memory, only system RAM... The video memory is only used when calculations are made in the 3D domain (gaming) like shading or rendering of textures. I just wanted to point out if your PC can run PS at nice speeds while editing your pics, FM should be no problem at all for your PC/Mac from a graphics stand point.

Jim

[kiwiora]

Well i'm going to reply back based on my users setup. I had a look and they are 16mb. Mine is 64mb hehehe

I have been using my spare one in the library which is based on users setup (i.e 16mb). I don't see why I should have to upgrade all of my video cards when I upgrade Filemaker!

Having said that I have found something interesting. If you drag an item quickly to where you want to drop it, the "outline" doesn't appear, you have to slightly "bump" your mouse to get it to "register" that this is where you've dragged it to. If you instead haltingly drag it to position, it's had time to catch up and moves seemlessly to position. Hope that makes sense.