Javascript workaround for slow scrolling with smooth scrolling in firefox

Question

I am a developer for a web application. In this application there is a certain scenario where there are multiple position:fixed elements, and canvases and a overflow:scroll element. In this scenario, scrolling is super slow on firefox when smooth scrolling is enabled.

From the user's perspective the solution is simply to disable smooth scrolling. However, as a developer I can't ensure that the user has done this.

Is there anywhere that I can tell firefox to not to use smooth scrolling for my website from javascript (or html)? Or is there any other known workaround for this?

Answer 1

I do understand that your question basically is how to disable smooth scrolling. however I will answer you a little differently to get this working.

Why different?

Even if you can detect smooth scrolling of users, you cannot force the user to disable it. In other words, you are trying to cover the problem instead of solving it. so lets solve it!

Intro: pixels-to-screen pipeline

On each frame the browser does the following steps to render the page on screen.

• JavaScript. Typically JavaScript is used to handle work that will result in visual changes, whether it’s jQuery’s animate function, sorting a data set, or adding DOM elements to the page. It doesn’t have to be JavaScript that triggers a visual change, though: CSS Animations, Transitions, and the Web Animations API are also commonly used.

• Style calculations. This is the process of figuring out which CSS rules apply to which elements based on matching selectors, e.g. .headline or .nav > .nav__item. From there, once rules are known, they are applied and the final styles for each element are calculated.

• Layout. Once the browser knows which rules apply to an element it can begin to calculate how much space it takes up and where it is on screen. The web’s layout model means that one element can affect others, e.g. the width of the element typically affects its children’s widths and so on all the way up and down the tree, so the process can be quite involved for the browser.

• Paint. Painting is the process of filling in pixels. It involves drawing out text, colors, images, borders, and shadows, essentially every visual part of the elements. The drawing is typically done onto multiple surfaces, often called layers.

• Compositing. Since the parts of the page were drawn into potentially multiple layers they need to be drawn to the screen in the correct order so that the page renders correctly. This is especially important for elements that overlap another, since a mistake could result in one element appearing over the top of another incorrectly.

details and source: https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/performance/rendering/?hl=en

Step 1:

First step is to remove render costly css properties. You might not be able to remove alot, however you can replace rgba(255,255,255,1); with #fff which removes the alpha layer.

check this for more details: https://csstriggers.com/ some properties do not need to do a layout or a paint and there are less heavy than others.

Step 2:

Check for forced synchronous layout triggers. These happen when you force the browser to do a layout while its in the javascript step, then return to javascript, instead of walking smoothly along the pipeline on each frame. to do this, avoid getting layout attributes and setting them directly afterwards in a loop for example.

here is a list of what causes sync layout: https://gist.github.com/paulirish/5d52fb081b3570c81e3a

read more: https://developers.google.com/web/tools/chrome-devtools/profile/rendering-tools/forced-synchronous-layouts?hl=en

Step 3:

Move components on the page that need to be repainted regularly into new layers.

The browser needs to repaint every time you scroll or an animation is playing. to avoid a full page repaint and only repaint the part that is changing, move that part (ex parallax, navigation, animation) to a new layer on the browser (think about it like photoshop layers)

to do so use the will-change css property to tell the browser to move it to a new layer, and use transform: translateZ(0); if you want to force the broswer to move it.