Upgrade StorageZotero is painfully slow
I recently tried to get a fellow academic interested in using zotero. He tried it out, was impressed with it, but stuck with endnote because he found zotero too slow.
I have been using zotero since the early days, and have realised in light of his comments how I take for granted the slowness of zotero.
I timed a few basic operations. Deleting an item took 12-15 seconds. I was able to perform another operation 19 seconds after typing a single letter on the search box (so "find as you type" becomes a negative feature). When I scrape a URL or search I normally switch to another application as zotero locks up firefox for around 20 seconds.
So, I am relatively happy with the feature set and stability of zotero, but I think that a priority now should be make it faster. Do others have a similar view? I have around 1700 items in my library. I imagine it's quicker with less items.
I have been using zotero since the early days, and have realised in light of his comments how I take for granted the slowness of zotero.
I timed a few basic operations. Deleting an item took 12-15 seconds. I was able to perform another operation 19 seconds after typing a single letter on the search box (so "find as you type" becomes a negative feature). When I scrape a URL or search I normally switch to another application as zotero locks up firefox for around 20 seconds.
So, I am relatively happy with the feature set and stability of zotero, but I think that a priority now should be make it faster. Do others have a similar view? I have around 1700 items in my library. I imagine it's quicker with less items.
Check out this thread: http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/2218/
Note especially the use of double quotes (") before a search. That disables the search as you type "feature."
I have to say, it's made me wonder about alternatives for the first time since Zotero emerged. Though I haven't found anything else that has remotely comparable functionality.
[edited to remove comments on FF's excessive memory usage, which turned out to happen regardless of Zotero's presence].
From the perspective of FF as an application platform, it's unfortunate that it's getting so big. It's really at the point now where it's not that suitable for low-end systems. I've been using epiphany and opera a bit lately, and they make a notable difference on my old PIII 512MB laptop.
Not that that's anything to do with Zotero, really. Except that it is a bit of a hostage to mozilla's state of development.
It is a beta, though, so I'm hoping ...
I'll wait for the next version of Zotero before giving up, but aargh...
Melani
i was waiting on another discussion regarding zotero performance...
( http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/2070/openoffice-plugin-too-slow/#Item_20)
Reading this trail, I understand performance could be enhanced with zotero 1.5 on FF3, but for a "non beta user" ;o-) , that means end of year...
I have to deliver my memory in june....
i can finish with a slow version (waiting 30s is not so hard !), but if it's works...
will the 1.04 release solve the error mTagStart(nTagIndex) = Len(sResultText)" ?
pam
Adding an item (just reference, no attached files) now takes about 36 seconds
Deleting an item (just reference, no attachments) about 30 seconds
Entering a search term about 18 seconds (not using preface of ")
Moving a downloaded pdf within zotero to link with a reference within zotero - 1min 15 sec
This is a serious problem for Zotero! - especially as during this time Firefox gets locked up.
Right now I still use Zotero for capturing references, but I don't ever do any management of them (like deleting duplicates etc) as its just too slow.
Can others share their experiences – am I especially bad? Is it because of my large library?
Has the Zotero team considered rolling out a specialised back end database interface for Zotero, separate from FF, for management?
A reluctant return to Endnote beckons...
In a test library of 3250 top-level items (and another 3800 child items), the operations you list are either instantaneous or take under three seconds on a two-year-old Mac Pro running Leopard, and they're roughly equivalent on Windows XP under Parallels as well. While a Mac Pro is faster than most systems, I wouldn't think you should be seeing such delays on a fairly new machine.
As a test, you might want to create a new Firefox profile, copy your Zotero data into it, and try a new install of 1.0.7 to verify that you're getting the same speeds. Then install the 1.5 Sync Preview on top of it and compare that as well. The Sync Preview should be substantially faster than 1.0.7 in certain areas, though we still have more optimizations to make.
No practical help to you, but it does suggest that your very slow speeds might be indicative of a problem with your specific installation more than with zotero itself.
As an aside, I wonder if <a href="http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080822-firefox-to-get-massive-javascript-performance-boost.html">this is going to be good news for apps like zotero?