Google Lemonade: Photo Upload Performance

Since I wanted to make a post of the photos I took this morning of a Grove TMS9000-2 putting a press box on some new bleachers, I used it as an opportunity to retest the photo upload function of blogger. My initial experience was that I could not select a range of files, it took a long time, the photos were inserted in reverse order, and they were inserted at the bottom instead of where I had placed the cursor. The good news is that I can now select a range of files, the order is no longer reversed, at least most of the time they are placed at the cursor location and the performance is better. The bad news is that the performance is still bad.

The tests used 10 camera photos. The .jpg files have a resolution of 6016 x 4000 and most of the files are around 6.3 MB. One of them was 7.27 MB.

One advantage of using a smart phone for my stopwatch is that it allows me to record lap times. I marked the time to fill the progress bar, the time the upload popup disappeared, and the time the images appeared.

Test 1: 35, 37, 53

For Test 2, I deleted the camera photos, fired up the task manager's performance screen, and added a photo at the end so that the location of the cursor was not at the bottom of the post.

Test 2: 24, 33, 52, the photos were inserted at the cursor's location

Test 3 is a repeat of Test 2 because I forgot to grab the performance results.

Test 3: 25, 36, 54

The performance results confirmed that the progress bar is indicating the progress of the file uploads. What is happening during the other two intervals, only the developers know. In the old version, after the files are uploaded, a "Add Selected" button activates. The time between clicking the button and seeing the first photo is quick. (That is, no perceptible delay.) It seems that with the new version that once one photo appears, they all appear. In the old version it takes a little while for all of the photos to appear. And that delay is a direct correlation with the number, and probably size, of the photos. For a small number of Facebook resolution photos, the delay is not noticeable in the old version.

Uploading this 658 x 430 image turned out to be another test. The popup seemed to just flash up on the screen. But it took several seconds for the image to appear. I ended up repeating the test because I wanted to remove some private information. The second time the popup stuck around for a few seconds and it still took several seconds for the image to appear. (The "flash" for the first test may have been a few seconds, but it seemed like a flash because I wasn't paying close enough attention.)

Test 4 is to repeat the photos upload with the old version. The times in this case are when the "Add selected" button appears, when the first image appears and when the last image appears. But in this case the last two times are the same because I did not perceive a delay.

Test 4: 32, 36, 36

Test 5 is uploading the following performance results for Test 4 using the new version. 

Test 5: <1, 3, 14

Observations:

Both versions achieve the same upload bandwidth, but the new version sustains that bandwidth. For this phase of adding photos, the new version is better. But then the new version seems to go out to lunch and then to supper.

During all of the tests, the photos were inserted at the cursor's location and in the correct order. So I'll try using the new version for multiple photo insertions because I can deal with the performance issue by doing something else in the meantime like raiding the refrigerator.

The new version not selecting the "Add caption" text and left justifying all of the caption lines whenever doing a "clear formatting" somewhere in a caption is a pain that I hope gets fixed before I'm forced to use the new version. But they are not showstoppers. (Actually, as of this evening, the alignment issues seems to have been fixed.)

I was making some good progress until I tried adding a photo about a passenger train derailment to Big Hooks. I had the cursor set between Eric's post and the YouTube video, but the photo appeared at the end of the post. (The bug concerning the rendering of YouTube's embedded code has been reported.)

I'm beginning to wonder if having an embedded YouTube in a post is what causes the image to be inserted at the bottom instead of where indicated. But in this case (mouth), the insertion was below where I wanted it (above the YouTube) but not at the very bottom. This is the first time that I have seen a "lost" photo not be at the very bottom.

Nope, YouTube is not the issue. I inserted this portal photo in Hoosac above three YouTubes and it worked OK.

Now I'm beginning to wonder if photos end up at, or near, the bottom when a post is large. I tried adding a photo near the top of Docks, but it ended up at the bottom. It is 7:20pm and I'm going back to the old version to get my progress on my own work.