FindDatabses has been up and running on the site for over three months now, but it was pretty hidden. Users had to be told where it was in order to access it. Call it a “soft opening.” Now it is time of the Grand Opening. As of noonish today, it replaced both the Databases A to Z list, and the Databases by Subject/Metalib interface. So far it has gone well, however, we are noticing some page load time issues on some machines running FireFox.
I think we have the page load issue figured out though. I believe it is the “all tags” file that is slowing it down. The FindDatabases page is actually made up of a bunch of different files. When the user hits the page several files are loading at once. Those files are the A-to-Z list, the subject list, the popular tags list, and the all tags list. IE lets you go about your business as all the seperate files load, while FF makes you wait until all of them are loaded. You won’t notice this wait on most machines, but you will on some of the slower ones.
The All Tags list is growing by leaps and bounds, so it takes a while to compile, so that is what is causing the slowdown. To fix this issue, we will make the All Tags list available on request rather than on load. Meaning that a user will load the file once they click on the All Tags tab. That will also let us track to see how many users are actually accessing that feature.

finddatabases, pollak library website Hide