Stop Script message and Speed

grayeg
Hi,

Zotero has become very slow on my computer. It takes a long time just to pull one citation off the internet, and I frequently receive the message "A script on this page may be busy, or it may have stopped responding. You can stop the script now, or you can continue to see if the script will complete."
Buttons presented as options: "Stop Script" or "Continue."

What can I do to help Zotero get faster (as it used to be) and to stop sending me this message?

Thank you!

Erin
  • dstark
    I am having the same issue running Word 2002 on WindowsXP(SP2) with a 2.4 GHz processor and 512 MB of RAM. I have a paper with 27 footnotes (many of which are compound citations), and FireFox is using 90-120 MB of RAM.

    I rebooted, and things ran a bit faster for a while, but now that I've started adding footnotes again, they're slowing back down.

    Thoughts, anyone?

    Thanks so much.
  • dstillman
    Can you list the exact steps you take to reproduce the warning? We usually try to disable the warning temporarily before long operations, but there might be some places where it will still occur on slower computers. (It's very hard to avoid swapping to disk with 512 MB of RAM these days, and swapping is extremely slow...)

    We're constantly working to improve Zotero's performance and allow it to work with larger libraries, but currently it will indeed slow down as you add more items to your library. In the meantime, you might try working within individual collections rather than My Library. To avoid the Unresponsive Script warning, you can go to about:config in the Firefox address bar and set dom.max_chrome_script_run_time to 0 (to disable it completely) or something like 30 (to make it not show up for 30 seconds).
  • dstark
    I received the warning message when I added or edited a Zotero note (I'm using Chicago with full notes and bibliography), as well as when I refreshed Zotero notes.

    I was already working with a (sub-)collection rather than My Library, but per your suggestion, I broke that (rather large) sub-collection down into several more sub-collections. I also increased the dom.max_chrome_script_run_time from 20 to 30. Since doing so, the warning has ceased appearing when I add or edit a Zotero note (or at least appears only infrequently).

    Thanks so much for the advice. If you think of any other software tweaks that would help, please do suggest them.

    Thanks, again!
  • erazlogo
    dstark: you should just set dom.max_chrome_script_run_time to 0.

    dan: chicago full notes with bibliography is much longer than other styles because it has to use twice as many macros and various conditionals--for citaitons and bibliographic entries. could that be a factor?
  • grayeg
    I get this message when I am trying to pull citations from the web--my university's library, the library of congress, amazon, it doesn't seem to matter which side. I'm thinking it might work better to bring citations into Endnote from the web and then import these into zotero. Any thoughts?
    Thanks!
  • dstillman
    Set dom.max_chrome_script_run_time to 0 and you won't see the message again.

    Also make sure you've upgraded to Zotero 1.0.3, which speeds up saving of pages with automatic tags dramatically. You might also try closing the tag selector (using the icon in the toolbar), which should improve performance.
  • christly
    any resolution for this problem on the horizon barring breaking my library into sub-libraries, which is a project in & of itself?
  • Tjowens
    The devs are making some great strides on speeding everything up and the 1.5 release will include these enhancements.
  • dstark
    christly,

    As my own work around, I've started using the Chicago (Note without Bibliography) style, which seems to be somewhat less resource-intensive. When you finish your research project, you can then convert to the Chicago (Full Note with Bibliography) style. That way, you only (ideally) have to deal with increased processor/RAM usage once at the very end.

    It's not a permanent fix for older and slower machines, but it seems to help me quite a bit. Hopefully, it will do the same for you.
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