Javascript loop for 10 seconds at page startup

I will test with the Javascript stuff in Firebug when I return to the city next week.

Still happens with alpha 2. Try any page at http://petermoulding.com/. The delay is 10 seconds or more when I have a superfish menu active, 1 or 2 seconds when I do not have a superfish menu active, and nothing when I switch back to Garland.

There are a couple of hundred menu options when they are all expanded for Superfish. There was no delay with Superfish menus in Drupal 6 with a Genisis based theme or any of the ten odd other themes I tested with Superfish. I never tried Fusion with Drupal 6.

The site is upgraded to Drupal 7.7 with whatever jQuery is in Drupal 7.7. There are no errors in the Firefox error console.

I installed Firebug, Firebug reported some minor CSS errors, I fixed the CSS errors, and the timing did not change.

I am using Firefox 5 in Linux on a netbook in the middle of a tropical jungle. I noticed the same problem with earlier releases of Firefox on both Windows and Linux when I was back in the office. Firefox javascript processing uses only one processor of a multiprocessor chip and is entirely dependent on the clock speed of the one processor. My processor is 1.5 GHz and takes 10 or 11 seconds for the Superfish menu. Firefox times out the Javascript at 10 seconds and produces a message about a script taking too long or produces a message about the web site not available if the Javascript processing runs for long enough to make the page hit 20 seconds.

Firefox 5, and I think 4, shows a rotating download symbol that is grey when waiting for a reply then orange during the replay download. The orange rotating symbol freezes when the javascript is processing. A page request might be 2 seconds of grey rotating, 3 seconds, of orange rotating, then 10 seconds of orange frozen.

A fast modern desktop processor would process the Javascript twice or three times as fast, giving you 3 seconds. Good for the desktop but not netbooks, smartphones, lower cost notebooks, or any of the Dells I tried in customer's offices.

I switched Javascript aggregation off when testing jQuery 1.6.6 and have switched it on again. The orange rotating bit is the download and drops from 2 seconds to 1 second with aggregation on. The orange frozen bit is the Javascript processing after the download and does not change with aggregation. The download time is about the same before and after aggregation because the Javascript files are cached.

I stopped watching the crocodiles long enough to install Firebug. Firebug Javascript debugging slows the Javascript down to 25 seconds and usually reports an error in jquery applying something to the menus. I will look at the way Superfish identifies the menu.

The following code appears twice. Could Superfish processing be duplicated and double the processing time?
Would it be caused by the use of a subtheme?

<script type="text/javascript">
<!--//--><![CDATA[//><!--
jQuery(function(){
jQuery('#superfish-1').supersubs({minWidth: 12, maxWidth: 27, extraWidth: 1}).superfish({
animation: {opacity:'show'},
speed: 'fast',
autoArrows: false,
dropShadows: true});
});
//--><!]]>
</script>

I reported the duplicate inline Javascript in http://drupal.org/node/1241188 and implemented a quick workaround in the same issue. superfish_contents() appears to fire twice and create the same inline Javascript each time. My temporary fix stops the duplicate inline js.

There is no 500 Service unavailable server error and "The website encountered an unexpected error. Please try again later." is not appearing on my site when I browse it with Firefox. Both my Ubuntu machines have Firefox 5. What browser are you using? How fast is your processor (because that impacts timeouts)?

I also switched off the advertising block because that introduced a small variable delay.

@aquariumtap, I could not reproduce the error on my computers using Firefox 5. I found one of the errors on a computer using Firefox 3. Switching on and shutting down Apache made no difference. There was no difference based on entries in the hosts file. The only difference I could find was the error occurring in Firefox 3 but not in Firefox 5.

I am working on some projects using themes based on Zen. I switched the site to use Zen as the base theme and all the problems disappeared in Firefox 3. The duplicate Superfish problem also disappeared.