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Faster screen redrawing

dn1

When I use Quicken, I see the screen redrawing a lot. Examples:

When I open Quicken and it's on the "Investing" / "Allocations" screen, I see six separate redraws. I can reproduce this by putting it on that screen, and closing and opening Quicken again. (Three of them are the main part of the screen, two are the top bars, then another of the main part.) I don't think it is using my entire data file to that, I think it's just using some snapshot somewhere.)
When I click to an investing register, I see three redraws on various parts of the screen.
When I get downloaded transactions, I see a lot of redraws after the download is done. (This one is harder to reproduce.) This interferes with one of my favorite features (automatically downloaded transactions) by making it annoying.

Two issues: 1) all these redraws take time, 2) it's confusing because it's hard to know when the screen is ready to interact with.

Can Quicken work on making redraws faster, or fewer, or both?

I see several (angry) posts about this. I have no need to get angry, I just want to gather some upvotes for this idea.

I understand there are many specific cases, and there are pages about how to try to make Quicken faster. However, Quicken redraw code being cleaner, or Quicken self-diagnosing and fixing itself is going to be far more effective in the long run than telling people to try copying and validating their file, or re-install Quicken, or buy a new computer, etc.

On the new computer front, I use a lot of programs, and none of them redraw as much as Quicken does, or I can't see it. I play (older) video games on my box, and they have fine frame rates. If StarCraft can do it, Quicken can do it.

It's worth spending some developer time looking at why slow cases are slow. I don't want to hand over my personal file for testing, but if you had a tool to fuzz out all the private financial data, then I'd hand it over.

Example (angry) posts:

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7942531/why-are-we-paying-for-bugs-slow-response-and-zillions-of-windows-redraws

Link to performance advice:

https://www.quicken.com/support/quicken-performance-troubleshooting

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Status: Reviewed

Comments

dn1

Link to a performance FAQ by "Rocket J Squirrel" who also mentions "a good portion of Quicken’s display code is old and inefficient and can benefit from any help it can get." to justify fiddling with graphics settings. I am guessing the same (the display code is old).

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7915476/faq-are-there-any-windows-settings-that-can-improve-quicken-s-performance

Michael Sayre

I concur. +1

Rocket J Squirrel

Let's see, what year is it now? My previous plea to fix the extra repaints is from 2021.

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7901333/fix-the-triple-paint

dn1

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20405059#Comment_20405059

Thanks for the ref.

I tried to see that post (so I can upvote it if that's a thing). It says: "Permission Problem. You don't have permission to do that." The URL looks like a "discussion" and not an "idea", so maybe this post will help?

Rocket J Squirrel

Sorry, I see now that thread has been archived. Superusers can see it but regular users can't.

dn1

Let me know if you have ideas on how to get people to upvote this. I'm sure they're out there, but the chance they'll find this issue seems small.

Chris_QPW

Here is my general take on why this is happening. "No plan/no centralized scheme on redraws". Or another way to put it is one part of Quicken has no idea what the other part is doing.

If I was to flip the coin around you will also find a lot these kinds of complaints "I did this, and it didn't update that."

So, what do you think the developers do when they find such a complaint?

Yep, call for a redraw.

This ties into a lot of aspects of Quicken. "Why can't I do other things while Quicken is downloading?" (because the downloading process is accessing part of the program/data that you might be in, and the code assumes that it has exclusive access for as long as it needs complete. "Why can't I cancel the downloading?" Because at any given time Quicken might doing multiple things for the download in different threads and not really know how to cleanly cancel. (Canceling/allowing the user to work while downloading has been tried and has always led to "timing problems" and such.)

Some of the slowest operations I see come about because of instead of doing something at the database level they have one function that the GUI does that affects the database and then they call that GUI function over and over.

Add in the fact that I guarantee that there isn't anyone that actually understands how all of this works and as such I'm pretty sure no one wants to go into the guts of Quicken and make real fixes, because they will most likely cause all kinds of other problems.

My best advice for the first one is "pick the start screen very carefully". The same goes for when you start a download, and maybe save yourself some grief by going and doing something else and not watching it. On the "pick the right screen when starting downloading" you have to understand that download for Quicken isn't "downloading into the database", and then refresh registers. It definitely totally interacts with Quicken in the same ways that a user might. And it goes through several processes that you might not expect, refreshing all the way through that. When you realized that "the transactions are stuck in the Online Center" you realize that is where they go first in the database/GUI, but then they have to go out to each account, there is the "constant" refresh/flashing of the account bar, and if one is using automatic transaction entry mode you can even track it first doing everything it did to put them in the Downloaded Transactions tab and then push them to the register at the very end.

Should they dedicate time to improve this? I think so, and I voted for this, but I really don't expect much will happen.

BTW the investment accounts are worst, both in how the GUI is setup and the refreshing/recalculating everything. That is the reason it is almost always flagged first a "performance problem".

dn1

Add in the fact that I guarantee that there isn't anyone that actually understands how all of this works and as such I'm pretty sure no one wants to go into the guts of Quicken and make real fixes, because they will most likely cause all kinds of other problems.
…
Should they dedicate time to improve this? I think so, and I voted for this, but I really don't expect much will happen.

I agree. I wouldn't be surprised if it's the oldest and crustiest part of Quicken code, hacked up in 1985 to be cross-OS compatible, now understood by no one who still works at the company.

I still thought I'd ask for it, though. It is actually the improvement I want most now: a stable, faster Quicken with its existing features. Instead, they keep releasing more new features, likely for many reasons.