All modern browsers are perfectly suitable for everyday use, but when it comes to web apps and especially intensive calculations like automatic timetable generation, they give drastically different results.
Our statistics show that Chrome is by far the most popular browser among Prime Timetable users and therefore we did some extra optimizations for this browser in order to achieve maximum performance. The results are astonishing:
Desktop application performance on the web
It turns out that by using Chrome, the performance of automatic generator is 2-100 times faster than in any other modern browser, fully reaching desktop application performance on the web! If you don't already use Chrome for your timetabling work, we recommend that you give it a try.
The generator will work considerably faster in Chrome than in our plugin app, a couple of times faster than in Firefox and sometimes even 100+ times faster than in Internet Explorer 11.
Use Chrome and enjoy timetabling to the max
When it comes to performance, we have a clear winner: Chrome. The second best is Firefox and then comes Safari. If you are using Internet Explorer, we highly recommend that you avoid using it for any kind of complex school scheduling (although we do have high hopes for Microsoft's new browser called Edge). Please note that all browsers are still supported, even the 14-year-old Internet Explorer 6 via the plugin app. However, if you want the best performance, use Chrome and reward yourself with blazingly fast automatic generation!
Online services like Facebook, Gmail and others deliver only a small amount of data initially (e.g. only the first 20 statuses or 50 emails...). The general idea is to get the smallest data set possible and to work correctly even on slow Internet connections.
One of the challenges we face is that all school data should be loaded before the timetable is drawn on the initial screen. That means that all entered subjects, rooms, teachers, classes and their groups and lessons, including various constraints, need to be loaded first. In large schools/universities with 500 and more subjects/teachers that can take a while.
We have taken this challenge seriously and made lots of optimizations for loading, saving and importing timetables:
- All data sent over the wire is compressed, making it 5-20x smaller than before.
- Once a timetable is loaded, it is stored on your computer, so the next time it is opened directly from your computer (we check if there are changes on the server and load them if needed).
- When saving, all timetable changes are instantly saved on your computer first, so that you can immediately continue your timetabling work, while changes are transferred to our server in the background.
For those with poor internet connection we offer offline timetabling, while the rest of you can enjoy online timetabling at full speed.