Slow menus

I find the slow speed of menu display very annoying.

The right click context menu is especially slow. I just ran a test on the NASB and it took 50 seconds to fill in all of the menu items the first time. Subsequent times it takes 7-8 seconds. This menu should pop right up so you can do a quick inquiry about one word after another. It appears to try to scan your library to see what would be relevant and that takes too long. I would like to suggest that the programmers cache the basic content for a given book so that after the right click is done once for a book, it would pop up rapidly the next time. Things like the top 5 resources and basic menu options will not change for a book, no matter what word you are looking at. You could display these instantly so the user could pick them and then add the interlinear information gradually. It will create a much more satisfying user experience.

The same problem happens with the basic menus. I don't know why it should take 2 or 3 seconds for the Guides or Tools menu to pop up. Even though the searches are faster, all of these slow menus create a general feeling of a lack of responsiveness on the program and give the impression that the program is slower than version 3.

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Comments

Mitch Davis

Harry,

My guess is that you've just downloaded/installed Logos 4...which means you have an initial indexing going on WHILE you are using the program. This is the reason for the slow down...but once indexing is complete (and depending on what kind of processor/RAM you have - that can take a long time) things will go back to normal.

I'm running on a 5.5 yr old Pentium 4 Hyperthread...and all works fine (of course, it would work "finer" on a new PC, hehe!).

Todd Phillips

Things like the top 5 resources and basic menu options will not change for a book, no matter what word you are looking at.

Actually I think they can...I believe they only display resources that have entries for the word in question, and if it's not in the top five, it will continue look through all relevant resources and display the first five that it gets hits on.

The same problem happens with the basic menus. I don't know why it should take 2 or 3 seconds for the Guides or Tools menu to pop up. Even though the searches are faster, all of these slow menus create a general feeling of a lack of responsiveness on the program and give the impression that the program is slower than version 3.

I agree, especially on my 5 yr old laptop. But at the same time, there's a lot more intelligence in the menus than there used to be.

Harry Hahne

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/24537#Comment_24537

My guess is that you've just downloaded/installed Logos 4...which means you have an initial indexing going on WHILE you are using the program.

No, I understand that it is slow during indexing. It is slow all the time. Monday after the program went public on the Logos Web site, I demonstrated Logos 4 to my Hermeneutics class, which is learning to do various interpretive tasks with version 3. The first comment was "I thought it was supposed to be faster than the old version!" Although the searches are faster, there are many things that create an overall impression of sluggishness: slow menus (even fixed menus, like Guides, and Tools; times when you click on something and nothing happens without an hourglass to tell your computer is working; very slow pop-up menus; the long delay time on the information window; etc. Logos 4 is the slowest program I use. It even makes a resource hog like Adobe Lightroom seem like a racing car!

Bob Pritchett

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/25847#Comment_25847

What kind of system are you running, and with how much memory? Desktop or laptop?

The biggest help is usually more memory. Makes a huge difference. Older machines and certain processors can be slower, too, and most laptops have 5400 rpm drives instead of the 7200 rpm typically in desktops....

Harry Hahne

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/26165#Comment_26165

What kind of system are you running, and with how much memory? Desktop or laptop?

The biggest help is usually more memory. Makes a huge difference. Older machines and certain processors can be slower, too, and most laptops have 5400 rpm drives instead of the 7200 rpm typically in desktops....

Dell laptop with 2 GHz processor, 2 GB ram, 5400 RPM drive. I recognize that a faster machine would make it work better, but that is not always an option for people. More and more students are buying Netbooks and they have similar capabilities to laptops of a few years ago.

Basic menus, such as File, Guide, Tools do not change and should pop up instantly. As it is, they take a few seconds to display with no indication that the computer is working.

It don't think the primary problem with the pop-up context menu is the speed of the machine. It is because Logos 4 wants to figure out every time what books it will list in the menu. The point of the pop-up context menu is a quick way of looking up information. If I want to do a whole library search I can do that with a regular search, but if I want to see the parsing or look up an word in a lexicon, I want to do that quickly, as I could with version 3. Certain menu items will always be the same and should always be there. Certain books will nearly always be in the menu (e.g. my first 5 Greek lexicons will always be needed for a Greek text). I think the basic menu should pop up instantly with standard options. The parsing should also be virtually instantaneous as it is for the balloon help. The only think that should be filled in gradually is the list of dictionaries and this could be faster if the list is cached.

Another thing that has always bothered me about Logos is that it does not show an hourglass when it is working. At least that little feedback tells me to be patient. As it is if I double click on a word, it takes 3-4 seconds before a book opens. So it is not clear if the command was not received. I have watched students repeatedly try to do the command (such as double click), because they think the computer is doing nothing. In version 3 that was harmless. In version 4 that could open up several windows as the multiple commands are executed.

The end result of these problems is that the new program feels less responsive. It is all a matter of perception. When I showed students version 4 in a class demo on "opening day", many commented that the program was slower than version 3.

Damian McGrath

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/27732#Comment_27732

It don't think the primary problem with the pop-up context menu is the speed of the machine. It is because Logos 4 wants to figure out every time what books it will list in the menu. The point of the pop-up context menu is a quick way of looking up information. If I want to do a whole library search I can do that with a regular search, but if I want to see the parsing or look up an word in a lexicon, I want to do that quickly, as I could with version 3. Certain menu items will always be the same and should always be there. Certain books will nearly always be in the menu (e.g. my first 5 Greek lexicons will always be needed for a Greek text). I think the basic menu should pop up instantly with standard options. The parsing should also be virtually instantaneous as it is for the balloon help. The only think that should be filled in gradually is the list of dictionaries and this could be faster if the list is cached.

Personally, I would go back to the way keylinking operated in v3. This also allowed us to send phrases to our preferred dictionaries, etc. It was quicker and offer more functionality in this area.

Another thing that has always bothered me about Logos is that it does not show an hourglass when it is working. At least that little feedback tells me to be patient.

Well with right click context menus and tools like the Information Tool we do get the little whirling thing to keep us interested...

Kevin A. Purcell

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/27842#Comment_27842

I'm experiencing slow performance too on an Intel Quad Core Processor with 8 GB of Memory and a 1 TB drive with a 16 mb cache. Everything else I have is very fast on this machine. Logos is very slow.

Greg Gray

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/28923#Comment_28923

My right click menu takes 5-6 seconds to fully load

Information takes 6-10 seconds to display when in an interlinear

Clicking on a word in a Bible with interlinear takes about 1 second before both the Bible word and the interlinear are both highlighted (as a side note to this - clicking on a word often makes it so the information for that word does not come up)

Clicking on File, Guide, or Tools is not instant either.

This is on an acer 1410 (Core 2 Solo 1.4 GHz, 4GB memory, 250GB 5400rpm drive windows 7 running pretty lean (booting in 30 seconds))