UI Freezing on visual notifications

I noticed this when I test the different events of the plugin and sometimes the platform is freezing, the culprit is the response time of retrieving the assets. We should bundle at least 3 visual notifications that the plugin can fallback into whenever the asset retrieval takes a while, this can also help if the user is in offline mode.

The idea is, we need to request download assets if it returns fast enough, use it, else use the fallback. Fallback order whenever it takes a while to download: If the download takes a while -> use the already downloaded assets or use the bundled assets.

IDK yet on how we can enable us to continue downloading the assets if we immediately return the cached–downloaded or bundled–assets. (I’m still not good with threads 😭)

So I have a pretty decent internet speed (~40mbps). Maybe it’s about the CloudFront server host that sometimes it takes a while to retrieve the assets.

Demo

I had a rough and naive benchmark on my end, the visual notification duration would look like:

Text 1ms
Visual 2,648ms
Audible 1,154ms

Visual execution duration is 3,842ms

Logs

Experienced the freezing twice.

2020-09-18 04:41:31,423 [  24135]   WARN - .diagnostic.PerformanceWatcher - UI was frozen for 6490ms...
2020-09-18 04:41:53,217 [  45929]   WARN - .diagnostic.PerformanceWatcher - UI was frozen for 7528ms...

2020-09-18 04:41:26,382 [  19094]   WARN - tor.plugin.assets.AssetManager - Attempting to download asset https://waifu.assets.unthrottled.io/visuals/greetings/greeting_4.gif 
2020-09-18 04:41:31,423 [  24135]   WARN - .diagnostic.PerformanceWatcher - UI was frozen for 6490ms, details saved to ... 
2020-09-18 04:41:38,323 [  31035]   WARN - tor.plugin.assets.AssetManager - Attempting to download asset https://waifu.assets.unthrottled.io/text/celebration.json 
2020-09-18 04:41:39,369 [  32081]   WARN - tor.plugin.assets.AssetManager - Attempting to download asset https://waifu.assets.unthrottled.io/visuals/dance_crew.gif 
2020-09-18 04:41:41,472 [  34184]   WARN - tor.plugin.assets.AssetManager - Attempting to download asset https://waifu.assets.unthrottled.io/audible/celebration/waoow.mp3 
2020-09-18 04:41:45,691 [  38403]   WARN - tor.plugin.assets.AssetManager - Attempting to download asset https://waifu.assets.unthrottled.io/text/happy.json 
2020-09-18 04:41:46,876 [  39588]   WARN - tor.plugin.assets.AssetManager - Attempting to download asset https://waifu.assets.unthrottled.io/visuals/happy/happy_five.gif 
2020-09-18 04:41:50,769 [  43481]   WARN - tor.plugin.assets.AssetManager - Attempting to download asset https://waifu.assets.unthrottled.io/audible/celebration/tuturuu_mayushi_desu.wav 
2020-09-18 04:41:53,217 [  45929]   WARN - .diagnostic.PerformanceWatcher - UI was frozen for 7528ms, details saved to ... 
2020-09-18 04:42:06,081 [  58793]   WARN - tor.plugin.assets.AssetManager - Attempting to download asset https://waifu.assets.unthrottled.io/visuals/happy/happy_one.gif 
2020-09-18 04:42:18,902 [  71614]   WARN - tor.plugin.assets.AssetManager - Attempting to download asset https://waifu.assets.unthrottled.io/text/smug.json 
2020-09-18 04:42:19,939 [  72651]   WARN - tor.plugin.assets.AssetManager - Attempting to download asset https://waifu.assets.unthrottled.io/visuals/smug/smug_reaction_1.gif 
2020-09-18 04:42:21,386 [  74098]   WARN - tor.plugin.assets.AssetManager - Attempting to download asset https://waifu.assets.unthrottled.io/audible/celebration/sugoi_sugoi.wav 
2020-09-18 04:42:26,034 [  78746]   WARN - tor.plugin.assets.AssetManager - Attempting to download asset https://waifu.assets.unthrottled.io/visuals/smug/smugumin_1.gif 
2020-09-18 04:42:28,590 [  81302]   WARN - tor.plugin.assets.AssetManager - Attempting to download asset https://waifu.assets.unthrottled.io/audible/celebration/padoru_padoru.wav 
2020-09-18 04:42:33,907 [  86619]   WARN - tor.plugin.assets.AssetManager - Attempting to download asset https://waifu.assets.unthrottled.io/visuals/celebration/tohru_approval.gif 
2020-09-18 04:42:35,289 [  88001]   WARN - tor.plugin.assets.AssetManager - Attempting to download asset https://waifu.assets.unthrottled.io/audible/celebration/nice_nice_nice_nice.wav 

[Unthrottled]

Good Luck, Have Fun!

[zaerald]

Cool, I think this is a reasonable thing to fix before releasing v1.3 WDYT?

Yep, I’ll include it in v1.3 as this will improve the UX.

Is this something you wanted to work on or did you want to work together on this?

I want to work on this, but I may do it badly lol. So I’ll work on it first tomorrow early morning then if I managed to do it and if you have free time you can review it and if there are more things that needed to be changed, let’s work on it together.

I plan to finish it tomorrow and hope that we can release it on Sunday.