Family Historian User Group

Something I do over and over again is to display a census image from ancestry.co.uk, then click on "Save" and "Save to your computer". Firefox opens the working sub-folder in my project's Media folder, where I can save the image.

Having done that, I immediately switch to FH5, create a Source record, then click on "Multimedia", "Add Media" and "Insert Fom File". FH opens the same Media sub-folder, where I can selected the image to link into my Source record.

Now here's the thing. It takes Firefox around one second, from the final click, until the Media sub-folder's files are displayed. And it takes FH around six or seven seconds to do exactly the same thing. Every time. Now I know there are around 2000 JPG images in the folder, but if Firefox can process them for display quickly, why does FH take so much longer to do what would appear to be an identical task?

Has this always been the case, or has it just started recently?

I have repeated that scenario, albeit with only about 500 image files in a Media sub-folder, but don't get the problem.

In both cases the window that opens is NOT actually a Firefox or FH window, but a Windows Explorer Save/Open browse file window owned by the parent program.

I assume you have the folder set to display image Icons instead of just textual file Details.
In both cases I found that if you scroll down, they both take a while to update the thumbnail images.

It might be caused by an anti-virus product over zealously scanning the image files.
But Firefox, being better known than FH, may be automatically excluded from the scan.
Which anti-virus product do you have in use?

It's always been the case, but my impression is that, as a folder gains more files, its FH access time increases.

I appreciate that the file selection dialogue box is a standard Windows component -- that's why the time discrepancy is such a mystery. I'm displaying a List for the files.

I'm protected by the ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite. If I turn off the anti-virus, it makes no difference.

Although a standard component, the window is 'owned' by the parent program, which can have an effect.
Also one is being opened for Save and the other opened for Open, which may make a difference.
I think it has almost certainly got to be some background task scanning the files.

A more focused approach is documented by ZoneAlarm:

On-access scanning checks files for viruses as they are moved, opened, executed, or closed. If you suspect that on-access scans are adding to the time it takes to open or move some of your trusted files, you can exclude them from on-access scanning.
To specify files, groups of files, types of files, or drives to exclude from on-access scanning:
Select Anti-virus/spyware, then click Advanced Options.
Under Virus Management, select Exceptions.

Try excluding both the FH program and the Project folder:
FH is the C:\Program Files (x86)\Family Historian\Program\fh.exe Application file with the usual fh logo icon.
Project folder is usually C:\Users\{username}\Documents\Family Historian Projects

Sorry, Mike, excluding both the FH.exe and the FH project folders from on-access scans makes no difference.

When the dialogue opens in FH is it in a more detailed mode or sorted by date, both of these I have seen slow down the opening of windows dialogs.

NO, because Roger says the folder is in List mode, and why would Firefox and FH be different?
One thing different with FH is that it is filtered on image file types.

In another similar thread Jane suggested:

BTW it's worth excluding the whole FH folder, as it can prevent scanning of the .dll's which are in the same folder.

i.e. The entire C:\Program Files (x86)\Family Historian folder.

I believe there are a couple of similar (but different) "standard" dialogues, so I was just checking as Roger is comparing the Save dialogue with the Open one.

Thanks to both Mike and Jane. Changing the virus scan to exclude the entire FH program folder made no difference. What DID help was Jane's query about the two dialogues, Save and Open. Essentially, they ARE the same dialogue, but when I opened the two side by side, it became clear that there was an extra header bar across the Open dialogue which wasn't there in the Save dialogue. This header mentioned the Documents Library, and the penny dropped. What I think is: in Save mode, Firefox was going directly to the appropriate Media folder. In Open mode, FH was going indirectly to that same folder via the Documents library, EVEN THOUGH the visible path displayed across the two dialogues was the same. So if I redirect FH to find the Media folder without going near the Libraries system, the problem goes away (I think, though I had to try it twice to make it stick). Phew! And thanks again.

Roger what I do is to download images to a To-Add folder in my downloads folder and then once they are added to FH, I delete them from the one in downloads, as FH can copy them in it means I am always opening a small folder and when saving in Firefox I can just drop them into one folder to be sorted and added.

For the benefit of other users who might get caught by this Windows 'feature', I'll try to explain how it can easily happen.

FH remembers the last Windows file location where you saved or opened a file. On a day-to-day basis, this is what you'd want; for me, the location I use dozens of times a day is the Media sub-folder of my current project. But when I close FH (which I do only rarely), I take a backup. To do that, I have to specify the backup location. And so the next time I start FH and wish to save or open an image, I have to reset the Windows location from the FH Backup folder to the project's Media folder.

At this point, the Windows 'Open file' dialog is visibly offering me, in the left-hand pane, the Media folder (under Favourites) and also the Documents library, which leads to the Media folder. If I choose either of these, my access path would seem to encompass the Windows 7 system of Libraries, which is what causes the greatly-increased access time. Bad news.

Instead, I have to take the much less user-friendly route of scrolling down to Computer, then C:, then Users, then me, then My Documents, and so on until I reach the current project's Media folder. And then, I get sub-second access times, as against the six or seven seconds which result from accessing via the Libraries mechanism.

None of this probably matters unless you have thousands of sources with associated images. But it may just help one or two folk to avoid this nasty trap.

But note that Jane's solution above avoids the problem altogether, by using a Downloads\To-Add folder as a staging post for new image files, and deleting them once added into FH. Thus the Downloads\To-Add folder holds few files and opens very quickly whatever mode of access is used, both when downloading and when adding Media into FH.