Let's get this out of the way: Yes, this issue primarily involves IE. No, I don't have the option to use another browser. Like many, many FT users, I often visit on my work laptop, which is completely locked down to prevent installing any new software. So let's not brush this off as "use another browser" - a considerable percentage of your users don't have that option.

Some part of the FT forum seems to have some very inefficient code in it, or something. It's pretty common for me to open FT, open 2-3 threads in different tabs, and hear my computer start to whine - the CPU fan kicks in, because each tab is pegging one of the processor's cores. And it's not like the computers I'm using are underpowered - I'm typing this from a desktop with an i7 with 8 logical cores, 16 GB of RAM, an SSD, etc. And most of the time, each open tab will max out one of those cores, and show 13% CPU usage in task manager.

This is annoying on a powerful desktop, but can be dealt with. On my laptop, however, opening FT means my battery life projection drops from ~9 hours to about 1:40. It just destroys the CPU. Sometimes it causes the entire browser to hang.

Like I said, I know IE isn't the preferred browser of developers (I do a little development, so I understand why). But I also know that many people who use this site have no choice but to use it. Is there anything that can be done, any setting that can be changed, to make it not such a massive resource hog?

I should note that while it's not as bad, the same issue does occur in FF. Right now I've got 4 FT tabs open in FF, and it's consistently pulling 7% CPU. Other websites (including other forums) pull 0%, as you'd expect. So it's worse in IE, but it's certainly not limited to it. There's something going on in the background, eating CPU cycles for breakfast.

Tested using IE 11, IE 10, & FF 45, all on Win 7.

It's not quite that bad for me, but this site also spikes CPU usage on a MacBook Pro using Safari.

I have the same issue and many times my computer kicks out a script error as the script is too large to continue running the page of the thread I am trying to view.

I also wonder about the ads, as currently on this page I am posting, there are 3 separate ads for the Marriott Rewards Visa Card. Two say the same exact thing and the header just has a different destination than the other 2.

Before the latest upgrade the ads would fit into posts' margins. Now, they add to the size of the page. I don't mind the ads as they pay for us FT's to read and post without any subscription fees, but to me, it's an overload if all of them say the same thing.

I've suspected the ads as well, but whatever the problem is, it seems to be getting worse. Having multiple FT tabs open yesterday resulted in crazy-high CPU usage and several browser crashes.

The ads (all of them....and, boy, there sure are a lot of them ever since the latest "enhancement" and "upgrade") is causing pages to load very slowly.

Every day, it seems like this website is giving me just about what I pay for it, and not a cent more.

The ads at this place are absurd. Right now, this page is showing me the same Marriott credit card ad — six times.

Six ads, same ad all six places. No doubt that's causing the CPU spike.

I don't have ads but tonight things are loading slowly.

Cheers.

It's a DDOS attack. It'll pass shortly.

Any thoughts as to the huge CPU usage the rest of us are reporting?

In my case, it is not that much CPU usage, as the memory usage. Flyertalk forum pages are extremely heavy. Web browser (and I tested this on FF, Opera, and I believe Chrome, but it's been a while) gets bogged down when you open several pages on FT.
And even when you close them, since FF caches the closed pages for a while (to "reopen recently closed pages", I believe), - the memory usage by the browser remains high. And if you have any other programs open on the same computer, the OS starts swapping the memory to the HDD, and that can bring the OS to crawling. I suspect there might also be some heavy JS in the page source that contributes to the problem.

So, the suggestion to the FT developers is to look into how to make all FT pages lighter: both for memory and CPU usage.

I think the ads are likely the source of the excessive CPU usage.

Most of my browsing takes place on my work Windows laptop using Chrome while I have a few minutes at work. On occasion I will browse FT using the same work laptop when I am traveling or at home. I began to notice that when I browsed the desktop FT site anywhere other than at my workplace, the CPU utilization for my browser would spike to 25-50%. As soon as I closed my browser or went to another website, the CPU utilization went down to almost nothing.

As a frequent visitor to the site, the high CPU utilization was getting frustrating since it bogged down my computer and drained my battery so I began looking into it a little more.

I found that at my workplace, they have a content filter that happens to block the ads that display on FT. Whenever I browse FT using the filtered connection at work, the ads do not load and my CPU usage stays below 5% while I move around the site. This is with both Chrome and IE.

Just to confirm my findings, I tried the same test on my Surface Pro and had the same results: Non filtered browsing with ads - 25%-50% CPU usage during FT browsing. Filtered browsing without ads - 0%-5% CPU usage during browsing.

Well if it's due to ads there's a snowballs chance in hades that IB is going to change/fix it

Cheers.

I did solve the problem, however now FT seems to know that ( as of today) and is asking me to stop.
What happened to the fee we used to pay years ago to avoid the ads.


because of the ads I cant use FT in many locations because its slow internet.