Incredibly slow publishing and preview times after updates

[jcnassoc]

Hi All. Apologies, but this is a long one.

I've been dealing with a very frustrating issue with one of my websites since April 27. I have reached out to Xara technical support (i.e., posted a ticket) but they seem too busy with other issues and I have not heard back after an initial request for my XAR file (which I provided). I am hoping to get some thoughts on "next steps" for me to try.

--- Background ------------------------------------------------
During April there were two or three updates available for my Xara Designer Pro X365 setup, which I installed. Since then I have had issues previewing and publishing one of my site. It eventually works, but it is painfully slower than before (thinking now about 15 minutes as opposed to perhaps 1 minute or less in the past).

Was there an issue with the update(s)? Initially I thought so, but I have since come to feel this issue is XAR file specific. Here's a not-so-brief recap of main troubleshooting steps I've done.

--- Troubleshooting Results ------------------------------------------------

What I've gathered while troubleshooting the issue is that it appears to be in the exporting phase of both Publishing and Previewing. Further, it appears to me that Xara Designer's attempt to render the page in the Page & Layer gallery also triggers the issue. I say this as I've noticed that each page's thumbnail in the gallery takes "forever" to go from a placeholder/outline to an actual thumbnail. This is especially true of my "resume" page which is a very long page.

As an example, note that only the first four pages have thumbnails below. This screen shot was taken perhaps 10 minutes after I loaded the website into Xara.



When I took this screenshot Xara was actively running as shown below, and consistently accounting for 12 - 13% of CPU utilization. The "hourglass" icon shows (as it should) and it will eventually finish, though it will probably be 30 minutes+ from now. This tells me the process is not hung, but rather is processing somewhat of a non-infinite loop in the .XAR file.



Let me describe my use of "forever": If I wait for Xara to become responsive again--sometimes it "only" takes about 5 - 10 minutes, but sometimes it takes 30 minutes or more! It does eventually finish its processing and allows me to continue. During these periods where it is unresponsive I can see CPU utilization being extremely high via a utility I use to monitor my computer (which is an extremely fast gaming machine, so I know I have the resources).

Finally, even though this problem occurred right around the time of a series of two or three Xara Designer updates, I am of the opinion this is not related to the new release of Xara Designer but rather to a corruption of my .XAR file and/or a specific setup in my .XAR file that exposes a Xara Designer defect. I say this because:

• I am not experiencing these issues with another .XAR file after repeated attempts to replicate the issue.
  
• The .XAR file that is causing the issue consistently causes it. (Note: I've actually recreated the issue on a separate computer using the same .XAR file.)
  
• When I restore the .XAR file to a prior version (prior to my recent changes and the Xara Designer update) the problem disappears and behavior is normal. This is very interesting to me as:
  
  
  
  

  1. I decided to "re do" my recent changes using the backup / prior version, figuring that would resolve any .XAR file corruption.
  2. My changes were to replace a "Sticky" header area on my site to a more modern one that scrolls off the top with the exception of the navbar and two colored rectangles that are "Sticky at Top". You'll be able to see what I did in at http://www.jcn-associates.com/ (which I was able to update by letting a Publish run overnight).
  3. I "re-did" my changes to the backup .XAR file and now the same performance issue is occurring.

  
  

I find this extremely interesting as it "feels" to me as I've somehow triggered a defect in Xara Designer as manually redoing the above change on a "good" .XAR file replicates the issue.

The above is a lot to take in, so feel free to ask for additional information if it will help. For now I won't attached my XAR file as I will hope someone has seen this problem and knows how to solve it. Also, I don't want to give someone an .XAR file that will probably cause them to have to terminate Xara Designer if/when they encounter the same issue.

And THANK YOU one and all for any help you can throw my way.

_____/ Regards,
____/ al

[roly]

Hi Al, have you considered saving your file with a .web instead of .xar I have no idea if this will solve your problem but perhaps worth to give it a shot. I did this on a file some 3 years ago and it solved the problems I was having.

Ciao

Roly

[jcnassoc]

Hi Al, have you considered saving your file with a .web instead of .xar I have no idea if this will solve your problem but perhaps worth to give it a shot. I did this on a file some 3 years ago and it solved the problems I was having.

Ciao

Roly

Hi Roly.

Good idea. I'll give it a shot. I'm currently remote and on a laptop that fast, but probably won't be fast enough to open the XAR file before I need to leave in about 30 minutes. Trying it here anyway but worse case will try it tomorrow morning and let you know how I make out.

[Update: Searched for info on .web v. .xar formats and didn't find anything. Just trying to determine which is preferable so if you have a link/reference much appreciated. Thanks.]

Thanks for the reply!
________________
_____/ Regards,
____/ al

[roly]

Hi Al, here is a link https://www.talkgraphics.com/showthr...g-a-web-or-xar but Acorn says there interchangeable. An other thought, have you ever done start up as administrator, if not, close app then reopen using right click on app then run as administrator. You only need to do this once, it sometimes fixes some funny app behavior.

Ciao

Roly

[bkjohns]

If you have the inclination to experiment further, try downloading Xara Web Designer Premium as a trial and open the file with that and see what happens.

[roly]

Good suggestion BK

Ciao

Roly

[Acorn]

How about a change you might have made in a early page to a Placeholder that is not semantically correct? e.g., missing </div> tag.

When I get such problems I clone the file and delete the bottom half of the pages and run that. If the problem is still there, divide and conquer until it works.

Acorn

[sculptex]

I had an issue where practically everything on my page was set to push and when I tried moving a repelling image, xara freaked out and after a while, came up with a warning. I guess it hit an infinite loop where moving one object had a knock on effect on other objects until it also had a knock on effect on the object I just moved etc. But at least xara realized and gave me a warning but I guess you could have a similar issue?
I went back and removed some unnecessary push positionings and it has been okay since.

[jcnassoc]

Hi Al, have you considered saving your file with a .web instead of .xar I have no idea if this will solve your problem but perhaps worth to give it a shot. I did this on a file some 3 years ago and it solved the problems I was having.

Ciao

Roly

Hello Roly.

Thanks for the suggestion. I finally had an opportunity to try this last night and left Xara Designer Pro running overnight (about 10 hours) trying to get it to finally open the .XAR file. Unfortunately it did not and is still "working" (although I think at this point it is indeed hung as CPU utilization locked in at 13% and memory usage not changing at all).

At this point (unless one of the other suggestions made works) I will need to restore from backup once again and then consider whether to make my changes again.

Thanks again.
________________
_____/ Regards,
____/ al

[jcnassoc]

If you have the inclination to experiment further, try downloading Xara Web Designer Premium as a trial and open the file with that and see what happens.

Hello BKJohns.

Very interesting thought. I downloaded the trial and fired it up. Unfortunately it's looking just like Xara Designer Pro in terms of not being able to even open the .XAR file. It was definitely worth the trying though. Thanks for the tip.

I have a support ticket in with Xara technical support from over a month ago but unfortunately I've not heard back. Sort of frustrating as I will probably need to re-do my changes on a backup copy of my .XAR (and hopefully this time the same problem won't be triggered) and I'll have to deal with whether I want to continue using Xara. I would have felt much better if technical support simply said "sorry, we can't help you... looks like it's a corruption of your .XAR file" or "we'll get back to you soon" rather than what has happened (which is basically getting ignored). Not what I am accustomed to from Xara but at this point I guess I need to start looking into options.

________________
_____/ Regards,
____/ al