The problem with LiveDocs

Movie demonstrating the LiveDocs performance issue

Ever wonder why Adobe LiveDocs (sample page) is so slow? It takes, on average, a single use of LiveDocs to give up on it forever. I remember doing so many moons ago when I found it so slow that it was unusable. Nowadays, if a Google search brings up LiveDocs and I mistakenly click on it, my series of reactions is to (a) frown, (b) sigh, and (c) hit the back button as quickly as possible before that mother of a beast chokes up my browser.

I'd actually conveniently forgotten about LiveDocs for a while now. We had evolved a zen-like calm in our relationship where we stayed out of each other's way and no one got hurt. It's only on my radar this morning because someone who goes by the moniker of Spender sent a link to a discussion thread titled Adobe Livedocs: A World of WTF to the FlashBrighton mailing list and it reminded me of just how unusable LiveDocs is.

But why exactly is it so slow? Well, someone on that thread actually captured the behind-the-scenes traffic on LiveDocs and published it as a SWF movie. You have to see this -- it's actually quite humorous (well, as much as an animated traffic graph can be, I guess!) :)

Adobe, please do something about LiveDocs. They really are completely unusable in their current form.

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