The performance of Helix Engine in certain places is, to be blunt, abysmal. We know that. Our primary focus has been on just getting it to run and fixing bugs. This process has yielded steady performance improvements along the way, but we will specifically address performance issues with more tenacity after we have a reliable product.

So please do not report performance problems.

These areas have performance issues, ranging from annoying to severe:

1. View opening. (The time between menu selection or command key and when the view becomes visible.)
2. Lists, particularly long lists.

One place where preception is larger that reality is when a view is first opened. In Classic Helix, the view opens ‘empty’ and then there is a delay whle the data is calculated and filled in. In OS X Helix the view does not appear until all of the data is available, making it appear that Helix is ‘doing nothing’ until the completed view pops open. (Click here to see a video demo.)

This change was made because of requirements in OS X. We are investigating ways to work around this limitation.

This is called the indeterminate progress dialog. This dialog appears to let you know that Helix is working on something. The Mac OS X Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) do not recommend using the cursor for feedback, so the Classic Helix method of changing the cursor to a Command symbol (which was to indicate that you could press Command-period to interrupt it) had to be changed. (And that was a pretty lame indicator anyhow.)

You see this new dialog whenever a lengthy operation is ongoing. Clicking the Cancel button has the same effect as pressing Command-period in Classic Helix.

There may be times when this dialog appears ‘out of the blue’ and when it does, there is really no way of knowing if it will go away quickly or hang around for minutes.

You may be tempted, after watching that indeterminate progress thermometer spin for a while, to conclude that Helix has crashed or is never going to return. You may then try, in desperation, clicking the Cancel button. This is almost certainly a mistake. Wait it out! In testing, a list containing 30,000 records to open took nearly 5 minutes to open. But it did complete. Patience is a virtue that will be rewarded.