Toxic wiki pages

Some OLPC Wiki pages cannot be viewed using an XO, usually because the page includes excessively large images. The first step to solving this problem is to identify such difficult wiki pages. Then we can choose to either fix the XO software to better deal with the difficult pages, or we can fix the wiki pages. Or both. A web page is toxic when it freezes or crashes the XO, or otherwise causes considerable user frustration.

Trac bug ticket 8801 points to this page. XO users who want to complain about or report a toxic page can update either Trac or this wiki page. As usual with the OLPC project, volunteers are encouraged to do whatever they can to improve this wiki or the XO software. Generally, the wiki is easier to change than the XO software. But if a wiki page is toxic, then you probably cannot diagnose or fix it from an XO; you will need to use a more capable computer.

Testing tools: An XO with web browsing software, such as Browse activity or Firefox activity. The Help activity is a limited-function browser that can also surf into the wiki or the web.

Procedure: Test the following links with your XO, and edit this wiki page as you see fit, based on your observations. Add or remove links as needed. As XO software improves, there should be fewer and fewer links here.

If you discover clues to particular software bugs, you can create or update specific Trac tickets to facilitate diagnosis and correction of bugs.

Toxic OLPC Wiki pages

OLPC:News This is only a few clicks away from XO startup, but has in the past paralysed the Browse and Firefox activities on the XO. Should be tested occasionally with an XO.

Hardware specification has some large images that freeze or crash the XO.

Measure caused Browse to freeze, and Firefox to crash. About 10 MB !!

Browse. Ironic isn't it? This seems to be a good prototype of what's wrong and what can be done to fix it. The Browse page has a lot of images which are reduced size displays of full size screen shots. If we had small versions of these images, rather than rendering the big ones smaller, I suspect that there wouldn't be a problem. Also the page could be refactored to sub pages - it covers a lot of ground. General info, uses cases, development issues, design issues are all in one page.

Marvell_microkernel crashes Firefox; and Browse too.

Toxic non-OLPC web pages

Add links here only to non-OLPC external web pages that are of extreme interest to many XO users and that are toxic to the XO. Remember that the XO is optimized for low cost. There will always be killer web pages that the XO cannot cope with. We care only about web pages of interest to the XO target audience: elementary school children, their teachers, and the XO developer and support community.