May be an issue when using Export as CSV on my HE machine trying to sync my content with MS Win365?

[Keith-May]

See screen dump showing the Export files not saving in the Downloads folder? Nevertheless the files were usable, so may just need to save or move somewhere else?

[Keith-May]

[cbinding]

The first screen dump does show files from Phaser present in the local downloads folder. The second screen dump relates to deleting files from OneDrive, and this is unrelated to the Phaser app. Do you mean that you would like files to be saved to OneDrive? You might recall (we discussed this issue previously) you can choose where to save files downloaded from Phaser, however your browser settings may need changing from the default. For Chrome see under "settings" - "advanced" - "downloads". The setting "Ask where to save each file before downloading" will allow the file save popup to display when saving files, and it also shows the current default location used for downloaded files. There are similar settings in Edge browser under "settings" - "downloads". Other browsers should have similar settings. We cannot automatically override browser-controlled settings from within Phaser.

[Keith-May]

Hi Ceri,

My concern was that it seems to be taking much longer for the files in the Download folder to fully save? i.e. the screenshot should show (may need to zoom in) that several of the files are still trying to “sync” with something else (I’m guessing OneDrive on the HE network somewhere). It was still waiting to sync the files in Download after 30mins last night when I went for dinner. It meant I cannot copy them elsewhere while they are still trying to “sync” on my laptop (but note your point about changing the Browser default Save location).

More generally I am finding that Phaser is running a bit slow(er) since the latest version deployed, even (or most noticeably) files of datasets from XSM10 that I’d been working on previously, so not just the newer larger ones. I’ve just been checking to see if it is any different on my MacBook, and it does seem much the same. Still waiting after 10 mins for a THM98.JSON file to open in Phaser V1.14 I just noticed a message has come up in Safari saying “This web page was reloaded because it was using significant memory”.

I just checked the files this morning and they have now “synced” – so probably this is a ‘non-issue’, but I wanted to capture it with the screenshot while I could.

I’ll look again at changing the Browser save settings, as it might help to use the ‘ask’ prompt. – Thanks for the reminder

Thanks also for confirming that the OneDrive message should have nothing to do with Phaser outputs. The .xar extension suggests to me a Unix file but I have no idea what it would be, but I often get several and they usually seems to coincide with days/times when I have been using Phaser – but perhaps not.

Best K

[Keith-May]

To note, on checking the default location for my Chrome Downloads it is set up to be a OneDrive folder - C:\Users\K1May\OneDrive - Historic England\Downloads I’ve now activated the option on Chrome for it to ask me first where I want to save, so I could save into relevant subdirectories as and when. Cheers K

[cbinding]

The sync issues you describe are related to the way OneDrive works, and possible fluctuations in your own network/wifi/broadband connection speed. It maintains a constantly synchronised folder between your local machine and a server, so its synchronisation speed depends on the network connectivity to the server, plus any server load they are currently experiencing. Upload speeds are always much slower than download speeds for broadband connections. This really has nothing to do with Phaser. XAR files are Excel auto recovery backups (see https://fileinfo.com/extension/xar) - so this is also unrelated.

On the performance of the Phaser app itself - yes as described and acknowledged in the recent email about this release - I'm aware it is slow and uses a lot of memory resources for larger datasets. The underlying issue is how many elements the browser is trying to render at once, it stems from early UI prototyping decisions which worked OK for smaller amounts of data but just don't scale up well. We have 7 full tables plus the newer temporal and group matrix tables, representing a lot of elements being drawn and maintained.

I've been experimenting on this issue and one huge change came when I restricted the tables with pagination controls so they only try to display (say) 20 records at a time. Then the very SAME import code can load the whole THM JSON data within 2 to 4 seconds - and I can demonstrate this to you. It indicates that the import itself is not actually the real problem, it is the subsequent rendering of all the data into HTML elements. Introducing pagination has a side effect that I would need to address because the 'filter' controls and 'scroll to item' will not work with it.

To improve performance we need to revisit ideas about streamlining the UI - reducing the amount of information being displayed. I did try to explain previously my thinking about the 'search' facility replacing the first 6 tabs - selectively showing smaller numbers of records instead of maintaining and displaying 6 full tables separately. With a bit of adjustment we could reduce the first 6 tabs to a single tab containing search controls, paginated search results table and details of the currently selected item. I can guarantee this step alone would massively improve the performance and simultaneously reduce the memory resources being used.

[cbinding]

Issues initially raised are not relating to Phaser but to Microsoft OneDrive