Bug 58040 - Toolbar icons flicker when switching between tabs
Summary: Toolbar icons flicker when switching between tabs
Status: REOPENED
Alias: None
Product: konqueror
Classification: Applications
Component: tabbing (show other bugs)
Version: 4.6.0
Platform: Ubuntu Linux
: NOR normal
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Konqueror Developers
URL:
Keywords:
: 59111 60172 80979 190728 267555 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2003-05-03 00:13 UTC by Praveen Srinivasan
Modified: 2012-05-08 23:27 UTC (History)
16 users (show)

See Also:
Latest Commit:
Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:


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Description Praveen Srinivasan 2003-05-03 00:13:13 UTC
Version:            (using KDE KDE 3.1.1a)
Installed from:    Gentoo Packages
OS:          Linux

When switching between tabs in Konqueror, there is a noticeable flicker, since for a brief moment, the background color of the window is drawn before the vontents of the next tab are drawn. The result is a flickering. This seems to be a general phenomenon when switching between menus and such in KDE; Gnome, OS X and Windows XP don't do this, and KDE would be much improved in terms of appearance if it didn't do this either.

Praveen Srinivasan
Comment 1 Stephan Binner 2003-05-29 17:07:18 UTC
*** Bug 59111 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 2 Yves Glodt 2003-05-29 17:23:09 UTC
Hello, 
 
the flicker even happens when you stay on the same tab and same page, 
and simply press "Reload". 
I've tried it out with a simple local htmlfile. 
 
regards, 
Yves 
Comment 3 Yves Glodt 2003-05-31 11:23:53 UTC
is it possible to change this bugs status from "wishlist" to "normal"?
Comment 4 Datschge 2003-05-31 23:56:17 UTC
This report is a dupe of Bug 39234, both cases are about dynamically updated toolbar 
icons flickering as soon as they are dynamically updated. 
Comment 5 Stephan Binner 2003-06-02 11:06:48 UTC
It's not a dupe (tab bar!=tool bar, bug 39234 is about switching between 
different kparts). About the flickering in the tab bar itself (bug 59111) I 
have sent a report/patch to Trolltech so there will likely an official patch 
soon. What stays open is the flickering in the content area (part redrawing 
when shown()?). 
Comment 6 Stephan Binner 2003-06-21 10:58:15 UTC
*** Bug 60172 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 7 Stephan Binner 2003-07-01 16:29:09 UTC
See qt-copy/patches/0013-qtabwidget-less_flicker.patch for the proposed patch 
mentioned in comment 5. 
Comment 8 Ismail Donmez 2003-07-01 22:46:54 UTC
With 0013-qtabwidget-less_flicker.patch flickering reduced very much but it still flickers when you 
close the last tab ( leaving no tabs ) . 
Comment 9 fidox 2003-08-05 00:40:15 UTC
Possible solution to flicks on closing tabs could be to have a option for always show tabs 
Comment 10 juanjux 2003-08-07 22:35:28 UTC
At least in my KDE 3.2 CVS version is not the tabbar but the dinamic part of the 
toolbar what flickers when you change between tabs, create or close one. I guess 
this is inevitable when the views of the tabs are diferent (e.g. webbrowsing and file 
manager) because, after all, the diferent dinamic toolbars need to be updated and 
redrawn, but it could be avoided when you change between two tabs with the same 
view (like webbrowsing) just noticing that the tab the user wants to change to don't 
need a diferent dinamic toolbar and thus not redrawing it (and it could also be a little 
optimization). Just my 2 euro cents. (Should this bug report be closed and a new one 
filed against the dinamic toolbar opened?) 
Comment 11 Jelmer Feenstra 2003-10-17 21:03:55 UTC
This isn't just a problem with tabs as was noted by Yves Glodt; it's a problem with redrawing the scrollviews for as far as I know. My report, dating end-2002 describes this behaviour as well (bug 52026) :

There is some redrawing behaviour with KHTML that's rather disturbing. The 
 following is what is taking place : 
 
 - Visit a website with a non-default background color 
 - Scroll a little (doesn't matter how much) down the page 
 - Now hit F5 (reload), go back in history or click on a link 
 
 You can see the view is completely erased with the default background color 
 first, after which the page is rendered on it (with a different background 
 color). In effect, this results in a completely white view for a short moment 
 during browsing - very stressful for the eyes (especially when this 
 background turns to black after this white flash). 
 
 The strange thing is (that is, to me) that this behaviour is not observed when 
 you don't scroll, or scroll back to the top of the page (so the page is 
 completely at the beginning). 
 
 As this is pretty bad on the eyes and because IE and Mozilla both handle this 
 'properly' I was wondering if anyone had an idea about how much trouble it 
 would be to fix this. I've looked through the source myself but, as I 
 expected on beforehand, I couldn't locate the place where this gets done. 
 ----

Mark my bug as a dupe of this one (and get 40 votes ? :) ?

Comment 12 fidox 2003-10-22 23:47:12 UTC
In KDE 3.1.4 flicking when you change to another tab is not so annoying that when you create the first tab (the tabbar appears) or when you close the last tab (the tab bar disappears) in both cases the effect is very disagreeable.

Others navigators have solved it always showing the tab-bar.

Current flicking by the change of tabs is acceptable for me, at least ;)
Comment 13 Sashmit Bhaduri 2003-10-28 16:20:32 UTC
There is a LOT less flicker in current CVS head, but still a little bit. 
Comment 14 jsvrp.gw 2003-12-11 02:32:04 UTC
I don't see any flicker, using kde beta 2.

Should this bug not be CLOSED?
Comment 15 Yves Glodt 2004-01-03 20:50:44 UTC
IMHO no!

Right now I use the slax bootable cd which has beta2, and I still
observe the following with the toolbar:

When you switch between two tabs, the 5 last icons on the toolbar
("Print frame", "Find", "Increase font sizes", "Decrease font sizes",
"Security", "Download manager") get completely removed, and then redrawn
immediately. I would still describe that behaviour as "flicker"...

As mentioned before, a solution would be not repainting anything
unless the protocol between the tabs has actually changed
(e.g. from http:// to file:/, and thus justifying new/other icons on the
toolbar)



... ok, did some more testing, it's really odd... Look this tab setup:
Tab1: http://foo.bar
Tab2: http://foo.bar
Tab3: file:/
Tab4: http://foo.bar


Switching between Tab 1 and 4 causes nearly no flickering toolbar icons -> ok
Switching between Tab 2 and 4 is the same as above -> ok
Switching between Tab 1 and 2 causes a lot of flicker -> bad
Switching between Tab 2 and 3 or 3 and 4 causes nearly no flicker again -> ok

HTH
Comment 16 Vedran Ljubovic 2004-01-25 15:20:32 UTC
Using KDE 3.2 RC1 from Mandrake RPMs.

The issues described above are mostly fixed. There's no flicker when creating tabs, removing tabs, or when a tab gets renamed. Tabbar is redrawn only once which is ok.

The big problem now is creating new tabs when tabbar is already full. Try it and you'll see the horror. It seems that the original intention was that there is an animation of other tabs sliding to make space for the new tab, however this flickers horribly and is very painful to my eyes. Is there a way to disable this animation? Why can't tabbar behave just like taskbar? I usually configure KDE to run with max CPU so I guess this animation should be just as fast as all the others.
Comment 17 Vedran Ljubovic 2004-02-10 22:27:23 UTC
!? The problem was there in Mandrake 10 beta1, and now dissapeared with update to beta2. It could have something to do with optimizations used when compiling. Ah well... you can close the bug now AFAIAC (...am concerned)
Comment 18 Jose Hernandez 2004-02-27 16:27:58 UTC
Does anyone have this problem with the current CVS?
Comment 19 Yves Glodt 2004-03-13 12:48:22 UTC
is ok for me in 3.2.1
Comment 20 Yves Glodt 2004-04-18 23:10:41 UTC
well, but there is however room for improvement...
These 2 cases are still flicker-intensive:

- Opening a new Tab by pressing CTRL-T (seems to flicker more than using Location->New Tab)...

- In a newly opened tab (which has the title "about:blank"), enter an url
and press ENTER, and you'll see massive flicker when the tab-width changes
due to the tab-title changing from "about:blank" to the title of the website.
Comment 21 Yves Glodt 2004-04-28 23:12:03 UTC
I noticed another kind of flicker.

It happens also when switching between 2 tabs, and is best visible when you
open the same website twice, in separate tabs.

Now when you switch between those tabs, you can observe a flicker of the outer
frame and the statusbar of the rendered page.
The tabs themselves don't flicker in this case.
This is on 3.2.2.
Comment 22 Stephan Binner 2004-05-07 10:17:12 UTC
*** Bug 80979 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 23 Zack Rusin 2004-06-25 16:05:55 UTC
CVS commit by zrusin: 

Fixing flicker on initial showing of the tabbar.

CCMAIL: 58040@bugs.kde.org


  M +0 -2      konq_mainwindow.cc   1.1334
  M +43 -7     konq_tabs.cc   1.51
  M +7 -1      konq_tabs.h   1.19
  M +9 -66     konq_viewmgr.cc   1.266
  M +0 -4      konq_viewmgr.h   1.79



Comment 24 Yves Glodt 2004-08-15 18:34:14 UTC
I have an observation of this behaviour in KDE 3.3.
Although flicker has been reduced a lot, there is still some room for improvements...

Everytime you open a new tab, you have the last 6 toolbar icons (Printer, Find, etc) flickering shortly.

The same happens when you close a tab.
Comment 25 Braden MacDonald 2004-08-27 15:04:20 UTC
For me, the 5 icons that flicker are: 
 Find, Increase Text Size, Decrease Text Size, Security, and KGet.

I just realized - these are mostly the ones on the KHTMLPart toolbar, so they must be flickering as konqueror "detects" which KPart to use on the new tab.
Comment 26 David Faure 2004-09-10 20:35:16 UTC
Apparently the remaining beef is against the part-specific toolbar icons (-> retitling).
A very difficult problem to solve IMHO, given the KParts design (those icons are provided by the part, and when switching you go to another part...). AFAIK we already delay and reduce the repainting of the toolbar (Waldo's work from some time ago), so I'm not sure if much more can be done at the toolbar level.
Comment 27 Yves Glodt 2004-09-14 23:58:10 UTC
Today I started using the keramik style, and magically... flicker is greatly
reduced, as far that I could consider it WFM.

So maybe all the trouble I described was related to the plastik widgetstyle...
Comment 28 mhn 2004-11-16 11:59:37 UTC
Maybe have the parts-embedding apps implement a small interface to be used by kparts (automatically) in order to find out whether their toolbars are already shown?
I don't know whether the current architecture still allows this and how easy it is to do, just an idea.
Comment 29 Hugo Rodrigues 2005-02-27 17:14:34 UTC
Just to note that the flicker still happens in KDE 3.4.0-rc1.
Enrico Ros was a hero some time ago when he discovered and sent patches to correct several flickerings on Konqueror, maybe someone can follow his footsteps and correct this really old bug.
Comment 30 raditzman 2005-05-15 05:59:42 UTC
Yes, it would be really nice that people checked this. But oh well, kde rocks anyway ;)
Comment 31 Yves Glodt 2005-06-01 16:53:04 UTC
I still notice flicker (or more a onetime flashing) in the content area, when I
switch from one tab to another. This flash even happens when both tabs show
exactly the same content.

Should I open a new BR for this?
Comment 32 Yves Glodt 2005-10-14 22:44:20 UTC
Description of situation in KDE3.4.2:

- Open 2 tabs with the same content (webpage or local directory)
- switch from 1 tab to the other by e.g. mousewheeling over the tabbar

Watch everything beyond the tabbar flicker (scrollbars, statusbar, frame)
Comment 33 Yves Glodt 2005-10-14 22:48:35 UTC
s/beyond/below in my last comment
Comment 34 James Richard Tyrer 2006-04-19 00:26:13 UTC
I don't see this is a large problem but did want to clarify what is happening.

When you switch between two tabs displaying the same type of content this appears to be a flicker but what is happening is an unneeded redraw.

What is most noticeable is the content specific parts of the toolbars.  The toolbars are first redrawn without these icons and then redrawn again with them.

I am using Qt-3.3.6 on a 400 MHz system and this is the only thing I can see.  Perhaps the other issues have been fixed.

The same thing happens when switching between between tabs with different types of content.  First the toolbar is redrawn without the content specific icons and then redrawn again with the different content specific icons for the new type of content.

The cure for the problem is to eliminate the unneeded redraw. 
Comment 35 Yves Glodt 2006-04-19 11:25:04 UTC
Another unneeded redraw is disbribed here:
http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=58040 maybe they are linked
Comment 36 Yves Glodt 2006-04-19 11:26:11 UTC
here in fact: http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=124319 :-|
Comment 37 David Anderson 2006-04-22 15:03:44 UTC
One sub-case of this is that a new tab opens with no text, but then resizes when the text "about:blank" is inserted. If it could open with "about:blank" instead of redrawing, that would be a good start.
Comment 38 Gaurav Chaturvedi 2006-12-15 20:20:54 UTC
nothing flickers , i am using kubuntu 6.10,kde 3.5.5,Konqueror 3.5.5
Comment 39 Adam Treat 2007-09-24 01:49:23 UTC
This is fixed in KDE4 with r716094
Comment 40 Yves Glodt 2008-08-12 14:35:58 UTC
This has somehow reappeared in KDE 4.1.

Here, the complete tab-, url- and icon-toolbar flickers when I create a new tab, or when I switch between tabs.
Comment 41 Yves Glodt 2010-01-23 20:22:35 UTC
I still see this bug in the kde 4.4 rc1 packages in kubuntu lucid/amd64

But it happens only after the flash plugin was loaded in one of the tabs at least once.
Even then you can close the flash-using tab, and reopen new tabs, the flicker will still be there. Close Konq again, browse flash-free sites, and there is no more flicker.
Comment 42 A. Spehr 2010-01-27 05:47:37 UTC
I don't suppose this is Kubuntu specific?
Comment 43 Yves Glodt 2010-01-27 11:01:52 UTC
I have no other distro running so I can not test. Apart of that, this BR is probably related:

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=190728
Comment 44 FiNeX 2010-08-02 17:36:55 UTC
Cannot reproduce using KDE SC 4.4.5
Comment 45 FiNeX 2010-08-02 17:37:29 UTC
*** Bug 190728 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 46 Viktor Erdélyi 2010-08-02 19:33:26 UTC
Still there with 4.4.95.
Comment 47 Viktor Erdélyi 2010-08-02 19:35:01 UTC
(And I'm using opensuse 11.3. But I think it was there with Fedora 13 as well.)
Comment 48 Kai Uwe Broulik 2010-08-30 22:52:16 UTC
Still there in KDE 4.5.
But only happened after I messed around with the toolbar.
By default the option “only display icon” is set, after switching to “text below icons” the problems began.
Comment 49 Ricardo Graça 2011-02-06 16:22:52 UTC
I'm using KDE 4.6, with toolbars with icons only and this is still present. Granted I'm testing this with an Atom N270 which has about the same level of performance as what was available when this bug was originally created... 7 years ago!
Comment 50 Tommi Tervo 2011-03-09 13:25:57 UTC
*** Bug 267555 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***