Why does my program run faster if I click and hold the caption bar?

re: Why does my program run faster if I click and hold the caption bar?

Mon, 20 Feb 2006 18:33:32 GMT

Suppose progress is undetermined (for instance when transferring a file of unknown size), how many milliseconds would you pass the progress bar control with PBM_SETMARQUEE?

re: Why does my program run faster if I click and hold the caption bar?

Stu — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 19:12:01 GMT

I remember old install programs that used to display the name of every file being copied.

I was thought the install ran faster when it was minimized, but I didn't think that copying even a small file could possibly be quicker that painting the file name. Is it possible that a CD-ROM file copy could be faster than Windows' font painting?

re: Why does my program run faster if I click and hold the caption bar?

James — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 19:13:54 GMT

VTE (the terminal emulator behind gnome-terminal) recently had something similar done, so it updates 40 times/second max. http://mail.gnome.org/archives/performance-list/2006-February/msg00006.html

re: Why does my program run faster if I click and hold the caption bar?

Mon, 20 Feb 2006 19:20:40 GMT

Font rendering has been improved too. Here's a nice overview of everything new and better:

http://www.gnome.org/~davyd/gnome-2-14/

re: Why does my program run faster if I click and hold the caption bar?

Miles Archer — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 19:21:04 GMT

On VAX (VMS) if a system had a heavy load and was sluggish, it would seem to give your process more resources if you hit Ctrl-T frequently. Don't know if this was mere superstition or if it really worked. It's kind of the opposite of what this case, though.

re: Why does my program run faster if I click and hold the caption bar?

Adrian — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 19:41:59 GMT

Miles: VMS, like many timesharing systems, would give your process a small, temporary priority boost whenever there was an interaction (like typing). Hitting Ctrl+T probably had no direct effect, but you might get a short priority boost which gives you a few more cycles for a second or two.

re: Why does my program run faster if I click and hold the caption bar?

Eber Irigoyen — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 19:58:39 GMT

ah!... the Windows copy has always had this problem then!
I have noticed many times when I'm copying files, that when I click in some other window the "time left" would go, say to 15 minutes, if I click back in the "copying window" the times goes to 3 minutes, not only that, but the progress bar does seem to move faster

is this related to the same thing?

re: Why does my program run faster if I click and hold the caption bar?

Graham Bradshaw — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 21:09:27 GMT

@Eber...

This might be because Windows gives a higher priority to the foreground window.

re: Why does my program run faster if I click and hold the caption bar?

asdf — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 22:56:39 GMT

On my computer, programs that do (disk) IO with a large amount of data can be sped up noticeably if you change their priority to idle. Fortunately winrar has an option for this so I don't have to keep manually setting it.

re: Why does my program run faster if I click and hold the caption bar?

Brian Friesen — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 23:33:31 GMT

Thanks for the explaination. I have noticed that in the past with programs, but I assumed it was my imagination. After all it didn't make sense how this could make some programs faster.

re: Why does my program run faster if I click and hold the caption bar?

Isaac Lin — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 00:04:23 GMT

I used to notice this while watching streaming video from ifilm.com (can't remember if I was using RealPlayer or Windows Media Player, though). The video was quite smooth while holding down the mouse button over the caption bar, and unwatchable otherwise.

re: Why does my program run faster if I click and hold the caption bar?

Adrian — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 00:57:51 GMT

Isn't this advice contrary to some of your recent posts? Haven't you been recommending notification mechanisms rather than polling?

I've always thought of InvalidateRect() as a notification mechansim. It sets a flag that we need to do work when it's convenient. The WM_PAINT message is low priority, sent when there are no other messages in the queue. Several InvalidateRect()s can happen before the paint message is sent. WM_PAINTs shouldn't happen at some outlandish rate.

Can you offer a perspective that distinguishes this case (where polling is preferred) from other the other recent examples where you've argued against polling?

re: Why does my program run faster if I click and hold the caption bar?

oldnewthing — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 01:07:22 GMT

Adrian: I discussed this in the last paragraph but focused on the main idea of "don't update too frequently".

re: Why does my program run faster if I click and hold the caption bar?

ipoverscsi — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 03:43:42 GMT

A related question is: why does my application run faster when I wiggle the mouse over the main window? I once had an application that would run dog slow unless you wiggled the mouse over the main screen (the application was doing some animation). We used to say we were turning the crank to make it go faster.

[I already discussed this. -Raymond]

re: Why does my program run faster if I click and hold the caption bar?

Chris Adams — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 06:08:01 GMT

There's a handy OS X utility (Quartz Debug) which allows you to highlight (literally - the area being painted will be tinted yellow/red) repaints and particularly repaints which are identical to the previous contents of the painted region. Is there an equivalent for Windows?

re: Why does my program run faster if I click and hold the caption bar?

asdf — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 06:32:33 GMT

Perforator: http://windowssdk.msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/wcp_tools/html/a3a04a83-2488-435b-a073-80f94dae9c04.asp

re: Why does my program run faster if I click and hold the caption bar?

AnotherMatt — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 07:26:46 GMT

Hey Raymond,

Great article. I haven't noticed that programs run faster, but I have been wondering lately why it takes so long for a window to redraw itself when you hold down the mouse button as you bring it forward from behind another window. Now I know! Learn something new every day.

re: Why does my program run faster if I click and hold the caption bar?

ChrisR — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 08:02:14 GMT

This reminds me of a contest Korby Parnell had regarding a Visual Source Safe window that was suffering from this (http://blogs.msdn.com/korbyp/archive/2004/08/31/223384.aspx).

I submitted a sample project to make one of Source Safe's windows think the left mouse button was being held down on it's caption (and it actually worked!). Korby did respond that he was going to send me the baseball, but I'm not sure what happened.

Alas, it never did arrive. It's no big deal, I just thought it was an interesting challenge.

re: Why does my program run faster if I click and hold the caption bar?

ChrisR — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 08:03:31 GMT

AnotherMatt: Arrg! I have wondered what caused that for a very long time...thanks for pointing it out!

re: Why does my program run faster if I click and hold the caption bar?

zzz — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 08:09:23 GMT

Unrelated...

Why is it that when I have direct ethernet between 2 win boxes, the copying speed (windows shares) is normal, ~10 MB/s with 100 Mbit NICs.

Now I insert a switch in between, the speed goes to ~5 MB/s. However if I use FTP to transfer the files with the switch in between, the speed is normal, 10 MB/s again (100 Mbit).

So that was totally unrelated but with all the smart people here, someone must have an idea for why is this so. I seriously doubt the switch is doing any less processing with the FTP packets since it's very basic model.

re: Why does my program run faster if I click and hold the caption bar?

Tue, 21 Feb 2006 14:49:34 GMT

What if you use the broadcast address for the transfer? I couldn't quickly find a tool to do it, but you've got a compiler ;)

re: Why does my program run faster if I click and hold the caption bar?

Marc Bernard — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 17:13:54 GMT

Now all you need to do is get Rico to add this tip to the .NET performance guide... :)

Marc

Cover the window

James Risto — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 17:17:31 GMT

Can the same speedup be had by covering the window with another app's window? I guess my question really is ... are paint messages sent if the window is totally covered?

Why does my program run faster if I click and hold the caption bar

Tech Observer — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 19:44:14 GMT

Wow... example of how not to update status in a GUI! The Old New Thing : Why does my program run faster if I click and hold the caption bar? Sometimes, people discover...

re: Why does my program run faster if I click and hold the caption bar?

thewebguy — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 20:01:54 GMT

haha this is awesome. i remember doing this on my old 386, never knew why it worked until now..

WTF?

Leopold Porkstacker — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 20:30:10 GMT

Hmmm, doesn't seem to work on my dual G5 Mac.... no, wait, that's because it's already running fast enough, thanks to an intelligently-designed OS with NO memory leaks built-in by the "factory".

LOLzors

re: Why does my program run faster if I click and hold the caption bar?

Maxim — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 20:38:53 GMT

Totally logical...

The last time I saw that on my windows machine is with WinRAR.

When extracting >1Go files... it takes less time to extract when running in the background than when you display the progress bar.

Why does my program run faster if I click and hold the caption bar? at philcrissman.com

Tue, 21 Feb 2006 20:42:15 GMT

PingBack from http://philcrissman.com/?p=925

re: Why does my program run faster if I click and hold the caption bar?

MacSmack — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 21:06:57 GMT

Hey Macie,
You're g5 wasn't running fast enuf so they switched it to an Intel. Time to upgrade~!

re: Why does my program run faster if I click and hold the caption bar?

Leion — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 21:14:22 GMT

This means I should minimise my programs to make it run faster....

re: Why does my program run faster if I click and hold the caption bar?

Joxean Koret — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 21:44:27 GMT

>This means I should minimise my programs to make it run faster....

No. This means the programmers needs to ignore the redraw events during a large operation. Me, as for myself, always ignore the redraw events or, at least, lock the window (LockWindow).

re: Why does my program run faster if I click and hold the caption bar?

Bond, James Bond 007 — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 22:24:28 GMT

I say it is all in your heads.

re: Why does my program run faster if I click and hold the caption bar?

lulu — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 23:02:53 GMT

What the hell is a "caption bar"??

re: Why does my program run faster if I click and hold the caption bar?

me was smarte then me fall on head. — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 00:03:42 GMT

Lulu: the bar at the top that has the program name in it, right now it should say something like "The Old New Thing: Why does my program run faster if I click and hold the caption bar? - (the name of your browser)"
On the right of it there are those minimize, maximize and close buttons.

re: Why does my program run faster if I click and hold the caption bar?

Jansen — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 01:25:57 GMT

Well.. I foudn out somthing intresting... in Win95 and Win98, if you were trying to end a task.. and you REALLY wanted to end it (you know sometimes how you can click and it doesnt die) wel.. if you click the END TASK button... and hold the mouse button in.. It ALWAYS kills it.. it was like the magic remedy. My IT friends, and associates thought this was quite humourous and completely illogical. But then again it was software from Microsoft!!

re: Why does my program run faster if I click and hold the caption bar?

Frode Børli — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 03:27:36 GMT

Shouldn't Microsoft somehow remedy this; that is - when a window is redrawing x times faster than the monitor can refresh, windows should fix it (in one way or another)?

Or even: somebody could make a "windows accellerator" that detect too frequent redraws and respond accordingly? This would actually be a performance booster that worked!?

Frode

re: Why does my program run faster if I click and hold the caption bar?

Wed, 22 Feb 2006 15:33:30 GMT

>Can the same speedup be had by covering the window with
>another app's window? I guess my question really is ...
>are paint messages sent if the window is totally
>covered?

Yes, that should do it. Also try grabbing a screenshot of a (partially) covered window. It should be black in the places where it was covered (actually the user would expect a proper screenshot, but hey...)

>Shouldn't Microsoft somehow remedy this; that is -
>when a window is redrawing x times faster than the
>monitor can refresh, windows should fix it (in one
>way or another)?
>Or even: somebody could make a "windows accellerator"
>that detect too frequent redraws and respond
>accordingly? This would actually be a performance
>booster that worked!?

I think that's a bad idea. It would cause overhead by itself, and the detected monitor refresh rate isn't neccisarily the real monitor refresh rate. I'm typing this in VMware, which fixes the virual monitor refresh rate to 60Hz no matter what, but it's all fake since there is no real monitor refresh rate in the VM. Whatever the actual monitor refresh rate is, is up to the host OS to determine.

Doing so would also break benchmarking tools, which *have* to draw faster then the refresh rate, to come up with some interesting results that basically say "your PC is x times faster then average" with some nice drawings.

You also don't want programmers to get even lazier, like "well, Windows will fix that for me anyway, so let's paint this in a while(1) loop". Those programmers should somehow be punished -_-'.

re: Why does my program run faster if I click and hold the caption bar?

Youssef H. Wardani — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 16:51:40 GMT

I encountered a similar situation coding in Delphi and using TDBGrid.OnDrawColumnCell
So now when I run any process that has a parent form, I use LockWindowUpdate before the process starts and after it is done.
example:
LockWindowUpdate (Self.Handle);
//my code ...
LockWindowUpdate (0);

[Remember, people, just because somebody posts a comment doesn't mean they're right. -Raymond]

re: Why do some programs run faster when I move the mouse?

J.Marsch — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 00:20:02 GMT

Raymond:

Your post started me wondering about another situation that I see sometimes:

Why is it that sometimes when an application appears to be locked up, moving the mouse over it will cause it to become responsive again?

The best example that I can think of is Visual Studio 2005.

(this can be a little maddening because it doesn't repro 100 percent of the time, but here goes):

Create a Web Project, and then try to debug it. Often, VS will just seem to pause just at the point where IE should start up. If you move your mouse over the VS window, it will become responsive again. If you don't, it can take over a minute to get your debugger, and sometimes IE will actually time out.

Over-updating...

Eric Gunnerson's C# Compendium — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 08:53:27 GMT

Raymond writes an interesting post about how some programs run faster if you hold down the mouse.
This...

re: Why does my program run faster if I click and hold the caption bar?

Ivan Minic — Sat, 25 Feb 2006 16:10:49 GMT

Very interesting find!

re: Why does my program run faster if I click and hold the caption bar?

Coleman — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 22:01:30 GMT

Raymond,

Another way to handle this is by having the thread send a registered window message to the main window. Then the message handler would be responsible for painting or whatever. The message handler could also decide to only repaint every 10th message or some other algorithm.

re: Why does my program run faster if I click and hold the caption bar?

Neil — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 20:42:31 GMT

So how many paints are actually generated by the 100000 invalidates? Not 100000, I hope?

re: Why does my program run faster if I click and hold the caption bar?

oldnewthing — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 20:50:54 GMT

Neil: Add some instrumentation and find out. You don't need to ask me.

The Anthology of Interests » Blog Archive » Why does my program run faster if I click and hold the caption bar?

Mon, 10 Apr 2006 13:56:24 GMT

PingBack from http://www.asis.ru/2006/04/10/why-does-my-program-run-faster-if-i-click-and-hold-the-caption-bar/

Ха | DoItQ

Ха | DoItQ — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 14:22:03 GMT

PingBack from http://doitq.ru/2006/03/20/ha/