Website Photos view is slow

No offence taken @Thijxx and yes you're correct ... I only mentioned the other issues as I think that they're possibly linked.

... anyhow back to the Photos 😉

@Walter... 

In case you have only recently added these photos to your account, please wait 24 hours to see if the problem is only transient.

My photo collection is months/years old and it make no difference as old and new photos don't display quickly just the place holders are visible.

If the problem persists, please check that this isn’t a browser problem, by using a different browser, loading the Dropbox website in an incognito window, and/or disabling any plugins or extensions you may have running on your browse.

In an effort to help you to assist us I built a new PC with just the default Windows 11, Service Packs and Edge running incognito installed. It make no difference to the Photo's displaying slowly on your website.

In case the above didn't help, please make sure that you don’t have anything blocking your connection to the Dropbox servers such as an antivirus, firewall, security program, proxy or VPN.
I haven't any issues with my fibre network plus as noted above I built a separate new machine to test. 

You could alternatively try a different network as well.

@Thijxx has the same problem so this rules out any network issue at my end.... As already mentioned competitor products work fine .

• @Walter can you explain the difference between the way the iPhone IOS Dropbox app and the Dropbox website views/loads photos.
  For me the IOS app works perfectly viewing online photos but the website is very poor - Why?

Hi @Megan

Now onto the issue at hand here: in regards to the antivirus and firewalls, have you tried the steps on your end? I'm asking since it's a bit unclear.

Sorry about that ... I built a new standard Windows 11 PC with the Default Windows Security installed running the Browser Edge in Cognito mode. Nothing else was installed. Just to confirm I disabled the Firewall and Antivirus  and this made no difference (screen shot below to prove/confirm) 

When raising a ticket can you also include @Thijxx as they  raised the issue and I joined in as a frustrated end user .... many thanks.

@Thijxx

Quick update .... Support have been in contact and its been escalated ... keep you posted

@Thijxx Its still on going .... Colin has asked for some more info which I have passed on ....

Thijxx Please see their final reply below .... not good .. Also added the update below to their Photo Group ....  How do you organize your photos? - Dropbox Community (dropboxforum.com)

The engineers have informed me that a resolution for the indexing issue may come at a later date. However, they don't have an exact timeline to provide at this moment.
 
If you have any other questions, please let me know. 
 
Regards,
Maddison

Thank you for keeping me in the loop! Much appreciated!

I do not understand what this indexing is about, what is indexed, the meta-data? You can't index what you don't have so it can't be the actual photo data. But the meta-data is way too small to create any delay.

may come at a later date means will not fix in project speak 😁 so I'll be looking for an alternative solution

Thijxx ... No problem

I’m not an expert on indexed or cached images, please correct me if needed . Ideally, our photos and thumbnails should be indexed and cached the first time they are viewed. This will improve performance when revisiting Dropbox, as the website wouldn’t need to re-index or re-cache most of our content, only the new or changed items.

The issue with Dropbox is that when we close our browser and reopen it later, it has to re-cache and re-index our entire photo library from scratch repeatedly, including any new photos. My collection contains over 13,000 photos, which can take 20 to 30 minutes, significantly impacting the performance of viewing and scrolling through photos on Dropbox.com. Even when the indexing has been completed the viewing performance is still slow with place holders showing for a few seconds when scrolling though the images.

I sent a support request with a comparison showing OneDrive and Dropbox side by side loading and caching the same set of photos. OneDrive took less than 5 seconds, while Dropbox took 1 minute and 40 seconds.

I’m not saying OneDrive is the solution; it was just used for comparison. Google might even be better. 😊

Basically Dropbox has issues not us 🤔

Hi @Charlie Windsor - thanks for the additional information and the screenshots too.

I just wanted to mention that the grey squares are called placeholder files which will sometimes show up while your files are still being processed in the back-end.

In case you have only recently added these photos to your account, please wait 24 hours to see if the problem is only transient.

If the problem persists, please check that this isn’t a browser problem, by using a different browser, loading the Dropbox website in an incognito window, and/or disabling any plugins or extensions you may have running on your browse.

In case the above didn't help, please make sure that you don’t have anything blocking your connection to the Dropbox servers such as an antivirus, firewall, security program, proxy or VPN.

You could alternatively try a different network as well.

Keep us posted, Charlie. 

Could we please stay on topic?

No offenseCharlie Windsor but get your own room! 😄

Hey there, @Charlie Windsor, let's jump right into this! 

The first thing to keep in mind here is that we're talking about two different platforms, that are built and function differently. 

Now onto the issue at hand here: in regards to the antivirus and firewalls, have you tried the steps on your end? I'm asking since it's a bit unclear.

If you made sure this isn't causing any problems, then I'd suggest we take this to ticket, to have a closer look.

Thanks!