High CPU Usage while viewing Dashboard with Firefox 3

Strange. I just checked again and today the dashboard works like a charm (CPU <5>ll keep an eye open if some weird combination of actions triggers that cpu usage again.

Sorry for being inactive for such a long time, I just wanted to give you an update on the issue. I still experience high CPU usage when viewing the dashboard.
I tried to identify when it works and when it won't. My observations so far are that most of the time a "stand-by / wake-up" cycle leaves my laptop (ThinkPad T43p running WinXP) in a state where it works. As soon as I start some media app (iTunes, WindowsMediaPlayer, even youtube or other sites that embed flash-players) the cpu usage of firefox goes up (only when the dashboard is displayed).
btw. interesting enough a full restart leaves the laptop in a state where it does not work. So I guess something in stand-by/wake-up is broken on my Laptop - and that error somehow counters the other problem.

As I workaround I disabled/minimized some of the graphs on the dashboard and that helps a lot (especially disabling the Score-graph). I'm down to 10% CPU usage with only "Time Spent", "Goals" and "Apps&Sites" active on the dashboard.

I inspected the firefox process in ProcessExplorer (Tool from Sysinternals) and extracted the following stack information:

ntkrnlpa.exe!KiDispatchInterrupt+0x7f
ntkrnlpa.exe!MmIsNonPagedSystemAddressValid+0x93
ntkrnlpa.exe!NtFreeVirtualMemory+0x59bf
ntkrnlpa.exe!NtFreeVirtualMemory+0x62c7
ntkrnlpa.exe!KeReleaseInStackQueuedSpinLockFromDpcLevel+0xb14
ntdll.dll!KiFastSystemCallRet
kernel32.dll!VirtualQuery+0x15
kernel32.dll!SetThreadContext+0x44
kernel32.dll!SetUnhandledExceptionFilter+0x2b
NPSWF32.dll!native_ShockwaveFlash_TCallLabel+0x743d
xul.dll!JVM_StartupJVM+0x1cb5
MSCTF.dll!TF_UninitSystem+0x9dc

Of course the stack info doesn't look the same all the time, but when the CPU usage is high than most of the time
kernel32.dll!SetUnhandledExceptionFilter+0x2b
NPSWF32.dll!native_ShockwaveFlash_TCallLabel+0x743d
is somewhere near the bottom.
Don't know if this helps.

Any news about it?

I'm a Firefox 3 user myself, but for comparison I tested the Dashboard CPU usage in Firefox 3, Chrome, and IE7: in Firefox the CPU usage went up to 45% when moving from List View to the Dashboard. Chrome used 20%. In IE7, however, the CPU usage drops to near-zero after loading the page.

I think Chrome's 20% is also way too much, so this is not just a Firefox 3 problem! I understand that Flash must use CPU power while animating the graphs, but after that it just displays a plain image of the graph. Why on earth does it need any CPU power at all to do that?! Seriously: I don't need the Flash animations, just give me plain old image maps with javascript mouse-over popups if this problem cannot be fixed. IE7's behavior indicates that a fix should be achievable, though.

So this is really a serious problem: It hinders my productivity if my CPU time is wasted -- and increasing productivity is what RescueTime is all about! :-)

My current workaround is to always select the List View when leaving the site open in the background.

I also tested the site http://www.fusioncharts.com/Demos/Blu..., and it has the same problem (FF3 CPU usage 35%, Chrome 10%), so I guess the underlying problem is in your vendor's product, either FusionCharts or the Flash plugin or both.