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GeoGebra applets very slow to load

GeoGebra applets very slow to load

by Sean Fitzpatrick -
Number of replies: 3
I'm noticing that problems with GeoGebra applets that loaded reasonably quickly in the past are now taking a very long time to load. (Most of these are local problems not in the OPL.)
It takes 15-20 seconds before there's any visual feedback to suggest that something is trying to load, and it's often 30-60 seconds before the applet appears.

For some of our students it seems that 30-60 seconds is equivalent to not at all.
They assume it's not working and move on (after sending me an email to complain).

Has anyone else noticed issues? I don't know if it's a change in WeBWorK or (perhaps more likely) slower response time from geogebra.org.
Could be a sign that I should consider transitioning these problems away from hosted materials.
In reply to Sean Fitzpatrick

Re: GeoGebra applets very slow to load

by Nathan Wallach -
I suggest you try loading some problems which encounter issue in FireFox or Chrome with the relevant developer tools running, and track the loading time of various items "downloaded." That is very likely to provide some indication if the issue is network/server latency/speed with geogebra.org or something else.

You might consider providing a note in the text that there is a GeoGebra applet "above/below" which may take some time to load.

Since GeoGebra is often providing their server resources for free, I am not all that surprised that there may be some delays in loading specific "free" content.

If you email me directly I can give you some email address of people who may be willing to put you in touch with people who can look into the technical aspects of what is happening on the GeoGebra side.

Note: GeoGebra's concept of commercial use includes systematic curricular use, while "in class" use a single teacher falls under non-commercial use. See: https://www.geogebra.org/license
In reply to Sean Fitzpatrick

Re: GeoGebra applets very slow to load

by Andrew Parker -
I found the same thing happening with our GeoGebra problems. After some investigation, it seems that WeBWorK is getting hung up on the 'findAppletCodebase("geogebra.jar")' call.

I've successfully improved my GeoGebra problem response times by removing both the `archive => "geogebra.jar"` and the `codebase => findAppletCodebase("geogebra.jar")` lines from my GeogebraWebApplet creation code.

Give this a try and post back whether or not it helped... because if it is the case, we'll want to update our documentation to similarly remove these lines from the recommended GeoGebra template code.
In reply to Andrew Parker

Re: GeoGebra applets very slow to load

by Sean Fitzpatrick -

I just checked a few of our locally authored problems.

Right now GeoGebra applets are loading reasonably quickly, so it's hard to get a good comparison.

There is no speedup from commenting out those lines, but on the other hand, removing them doesn't seem to affect the question in any way.