IE7 form response times for initial load (flexie?)

[marktaylor46]

Hi again, I hope someone can help me...

Hi have a fairly sizeable form that unfotunately has to work on IE7

This form takes an absolute age to render. I used some analysis tools on the page and it turns out that 98% of the response is attributable to flexie.js. Now, I know I can turn it off but it trashes the form...

Do you have any tips you can share on how I can improve speed of rendering in IE7.
1. Can I use a separate "form" on the same "list" - because I might be able to cut out some fields for some user types?
2. is there some optimisation I can do that will help.
3. Can I have a special form for IE7? that maybe I can align up without using flexie.js
4. do you think that splitting the form into multiple "pages" will improve things (i can certainly do that)?
5. are there any browser settings I can adjust to improve things?
6. are there any plugins for the browser that might improve things?
7. if I turn flexie off - are there any tips on how I can get my form back to normal working order?

.... really desperate on this one... would really appreciate any insight...

Regards, Mark.

 

[sales2010]

Hello,

I guess you already tried the latest version from Github.

I had the same problem once, and one of the reason was because the textarea element have option "Show max limit" activated.

 

[marktaylor46]

Thanks yes I had already realised that show max limit was a killer! I already have that turned off. It is flexie.js that is the issue here.

Regards, Mark.

 

[rob]

my suggestion would be to turn off flexie.js and use the labels above template.
and perhaps if that adds too much horizontal space, set the groups to render as 2 columns.

Mutlipage forms wont help as we still load the entire form, and use js to navigate between 'pages'

1. Can I use a separate "form" on the same "list" - because I might be able to cut out some fields for some user types?

Yes, copy the list, it will copy the form, group and elements which you can then edit separately (elements may require you to unlink them when you first edit them)

5. are there any browser settings I can adjust to improve things?
6. are there any plugins for the browser that might improve things?

Nope sorry IE7 is a horrifically slow browser, there's nothing you can do about it.

 

[marktaylor46]

Rob, thanks for the reply - I really appreciate it.

Yes, in the end I have switched to "label-above" template and disabled flexie.js. Then of course I had to twiddle with CSS to fix a few things on the layout but it's now working. I have also done a lot of compressing and caching (albeit it took me ages to test, as I had to keep excluding aspects of Fabrik that just hate being compressed). I also added longer "expires" headers that means more stays in the browser cache and doesn't have to be dragged from the server. Things have improved pretty dramatically but IE7 is never going to be fast (unfortunately these are corporate machines that cannot be changed!).

I did a lot of analysis using a tool called dynaTrace Ajax edition from Compuware (it's a free tool and gives absolutely excellent analysis - I highly recommend it). This now reveals that most of the remaining response time is associated with "ready" events firing many many times over. Is there anyway I can reduce these by turning something else off? I highly recommend that you try this tool yourself - it really is a revelation to see what is actually happening, and I believe you would find this analysis very useful for the future development of Fabrik.

Finally I did also notice that Fabrik is using several JS files that are not minified?

Anyway, thanks for the support and I still think Fabrik is a great product!

Regards, Mark.

 

[cheesegrits]

Installing Dynatrace now. I'll take a look ...

hugh

 

[cheesegrits]

I don't seem to be able to get it to work on my Windows 8 system.

When using Firefox, it never registers the Session after the window is closed.

When using IE10, the Session shows up, but clicking on any of the reports just says "the session does not contain any recorded web site activity".

-- hugh

 

[marktaylor46]

You launch dynatrace, it launches ie, you do your tests, the exit the browser, dynatrace will then take a few seconds to create the session report, then double click the session.

Works fine for me. I am using ie7 with ie10.

Regards, Mark.

 

[cheesegrits]

Yup, that's what I did, several times. But as decribed in my previous post, if I ask it to launch Firefox, it never sees a session after that window is closed. If I choose IE, it registers a Session after the window is closed, but none of the reports have any data.

I'll be rebooting at some point today, see if that kicks it in to life.

OK, hang on a sec ... I can get a result from IE, if I use the toobar within IE to connect to the dynaTrace server. But not if I launch the browser form within dT.

Yeah, looks like some useful info. I'll delve in to it when I have a little time.

-- hugh