Occasional delay in restoring application from system tray

This one belongs in a category below 'minor' and perhaps there should be a new category called 'trivial' or 'minor annoyances'!

If you tick preferences\general\options\minimize to system tray then, occasionally (aproximately 30-40% of the time) the application does not restore very smoothly and you get a blank screen with what looks like an empty log window (as it has the vertical scroll bar and associated arrows) appears in the mid-left of the screen for a second or two before everything appears as it should.

If the option is unticked and you minimize to the taskbar then you never get this problem. The problem occurs if you are running in windowed or full screen mode.

I've got a feeling that this might be more of a windows issue (I'm using 7 x64 sp1), but thought I would mention it.

I am running at 2560x1440 - but even if I lower the resolution to 1920x1080 the issue still exists.

Could also be related to me running an i5 processor which sits in windows at a reduced clock speed until the higher speed.

This isn't AV related as i've tested with everything turned off

It also isn't linked to getting a dir list from the local download folder as it does it when i've got 2 remote windows selected (have also tried putting the download folder on the SSD that flash runs from to eliminate the possibility of hard drive spin up)

Can you please include a screenshot of what the window looks like due to the delayed redrawing.

Do you have transfer speed limiting enabled?

Also is FlashFXP in the middle of an operation or is it idle when you restore it?

I can't get it to capture the misdrawing of the log window though for some reason, but as you can see it isn't rendered correctly and bits are missing for a second or so before they appear (note the grey bits in the queue/log windows)

If I can find my camera later I will try to upload a video.

This is resuming from a completely idle state with 2 blank remote browser windows

No optons for speed limits are used.

Unfortunately, this is one of those intermittant issues and only happens 4-5 times out of 10

If the embedded image is too big - you can get the file here http://i42.tinypic.com/1z6rv4l.jpg

I see what you mean, I'm not sure if there is anything more I can do to eliminate this.

I do have one more dev build for you to try, I will send you a private message.

This issue is directly caused by the akmai netsession interface that you need to be able to watch the HD content on sites like NFL.com.

With this software installed the issue is easily producable, but when it has been uninstalled the problem is completely gone.

Any update on this? - The issue is cleary some kind of conflict between Akamai net session interface and flash fxp and therefore should be easily reproducable for testing purposes

I've conducted quite a few tests on several different machines.

I also tested with Akamai NetSession installed. When Akamai is installed and running the delay increases by a factor of 2-5 times. Turning off the Akamai NetSession service via the control panel and things are back to normal.

I don't know why, but I did notice that my system became rather sluggish and less responsive with Akamai NetSession running. (This was noticed over the course of several days and stopping the Akamai NetSession service immediately eliminated the issues.)


When restoring the window from the system tray.

The window is positioned, then restored back to the maximized state, and finally shown.

After the window is maximized the content within the window must be rendered, now the content (the splitter positions) within the main window are all proportionally re-sized to the window width/height. This increases the amount of time required to adjust the controls and redraw them, I do believe that the majority of this delay is caused by keeping the content proportionally sized.

So why does this only occur when restoring from the system tray and not the taskbar you ask..

When you minimize a window it just becomes minimized and the task button remains on the taskbar. To remove the task button when minimizing to the system tray the application window is hidden. Its during this operation (showing the window) that causes the whole client window to repaint and give delays.

I tested several different methods and ideas and none of them provided much improvement.

One idea I had was to delay all drawing and then draw everything at once after the window is maximized and shown, however this results in an even longer delay and during the delay the entire window content is empty.

At the moment I don't think we have much room (if any) for improvement.

Thank you for an exceptionally detailed reply.

The only thing that I can think of is that the akamia player looks for files that have 'flash' in the title/description as it seems to be designed for the playing of adobe flash files and that is why it slows down flash fxp temporarily?

Other than that, would it be possible for you as the software developer to contact the Akamai folks as they will take you much more seriously than they take me as an end user, as it is pretty clear that there is a conflict somewhere between the 2 pieces of software and I love my NFL.com videos and my flash fxp and don't want to have to chose between them!;

Their contact details are

For urgent issues please call
(877) 4-AKATEC (US and Canada only) or
(617) 444-4699.
For non-urgent issues please e-mail
ccare@akamai.com

Please give the latest beta release 4.1.9 build 1723 a try.

I discovered a better way to force the window to repaint immediately after being restored, rather than just allowing the controls to re-paint later in the process, Please let me know if this helps at all.

1723 is certainly better - only bit that doesn't seem to be drawn instantly is the column on the far right of each 'site window' if it is in remote browser mode and you aren't connected to anything (i.e. the window is compltely blank) or if you are connected to a site (i.e. you see a remote file list). If you are in local browser mode in both windows the redraw is as it should be.

I've fired off an e-mail to Akamai as well, as this looks more like an issue with their software than yours because as soon as their service is stopped the issue is gone

Have received the following reply from the people at Akamai;

I am sorry to hear the difficulty you faced.

Thank you for the providing the Diagnostic reports. We were unable to re-produce the issue you reported. We have installed FlashFXP (on Windows XP). As an alternate solution for this issue is to stop NetSession when NFL game is not watched. NetSession can be stopped using the “stop” button on Akamai NetSession Interface that can be started from Windows Control Panel. User should be able to start NetSession using the same interface.

Could you please check the CPU and memory utilization on the machine by netsession_win.exe (there will be two processes) and see if any spike is noted?

Disappointed that they can't reproduce the error as bigstar has confirmed that he has been able to reproduce this quite easily, maybe it is because they only tested it on a rather outdated operating system?

I've done the tests that they asked for and there are no peaks in CPU or memory usage by either of the Akamai processes when the problem happens and the issue goes the second their service is stopped or the program uninstalled

I send you a private message with a new dev build to test.

spudgun, thank you for your help and testing.

After working with spudgun and trying a few different ideas we've come up with a solution that appears to solve the problem.

These changes were included in 4.2 build 1734.

The update is available via live update as a beta release.