jQuery AJAX slow in Firefox, fast in IE

Question

I'm using jQuery to post to an ASP .NET Web Service to implement a custom auto-complete function. The code works great, except it's slow in FireFox (can't get it to go faster than 1 second). IE is blazing fast - works great. I watch the post in Firefox using Firebug.

Here's the service code:

<ScriptService(), _
WebService(Namespace:="http://tempuri.org/"), _
WebServiceBinding(ConformsTo:=WsiProfiles.BasicProfile1_1), _
ToolboxItem(False)> _
Public Class TestWebSvc
  Inherits System.Web.Services.WebService

  <WebMethod(), _
  ScriptMethod(ResponseFormat:=Script.Services.ResponseFormat.Json, UseHttpGet:=True)> _
  Public Function GetAccounts(ByVal q As String) As Object

    'Code taken out for simplicity

    Return result

  End Function

End Class

And the jQuery ajax call:

$.ajax({
    beforeSend: function (req) { req.setRequestHeader("Content-Type", "application/json"); },
    contentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8",
    type: "GET",
    url: "http://localhost/Suggest/TestWebSvc.asmx/GetAccounts",
    data: "q='" + element.val() + "'",
    dataType: "json",
    success: testWebSvcSuccess
  });

As you can see, I've tried to use the HTTP GET verb instead in hopes that that would make the call faster. As it does not, I'll probably switch it back to using POST if I can. Right now I'm just focused on why it's super fast in IE and super slow in Firefox.

Versions: jQuery 1.3.2; Firefox 3.0.11; IE 8.0.6001.18783 (64-bit)

Thank you for any insight you can provide.

Answer 1

I know I'm late to the party for this question, but I just had to deal with a similar situation. Turns out the 'problem' was using http://localhost instead of 127.0.0.1

IE performed fast using either URL. FF was fast with using an IP address, but added a 1 second delay with using localhost.

Answer 2

So instead of just hitting "Run" in Visual Studio, I created an application in IIS and accessed the page from there - now it works fast in both FireFox and IE. Strange... I'm still a little wary about this - I have a feeling this might come back to haunt me somewhere, but for now it looks like the problem is resolved.