Extreme UI lag in Google Chrome when viewing a Dashboard with widgets

Support
1

Summary

When I log into the MODX manager using Google Chrome and the default dashboard appears, the entire tab gets extremely laggy. This isn’t the case for other browsers like Safari.

Step to reproduce

See above

Observed behavior

If I try to move the tab around in Chrome, the movement is extremely jerky. If I collapse or expand the MODX resources menu, the animation clocks in at maybe 4 frames per second. The highlight that appears when hovering over items in the resources menu is about a half-second behind the cursor position. Opening any of the “Content”, “Media”, “Extras”, etc. menus shows similar behavior.

Expected behavior

If I click on a resource, or go to any page in the Manager except the Dashboard, everything is fine. Buttery smooth and lightning fast. Interestingly enough, if I remove all the Widgets from the dashboard it’s fine as well. The widgets are just the defaults — News Feed, Security Feed, Recently Edited Resources, and Who’s Online.

Environment

  • Chrome 75.0.3770.27 (Official Build) beta (64-bit)
  • MODX Revolution 2.7.1-pl

Other Notes

I tried all of the following to no avail: disabling all Chrome extensions; deleting everything in the browser cache; deleting everything in MODX’s cache. Capturing a Performance log in Chrome’s DevTools seems to indicate there’s an unusually high amount of resources being thrown at JS Heap and Nodes, but I’m not a JavaScript expert so I’m not sure what I’m looking at.

2

I have not noticed this with Chrome. I use it all the time in the MODX manager, though I usually turn the feeds off. Sometimes waiting for the feed widgets to populate can slow down the dashboard significantly.

If it’s not the feeds, try disabling other widgets to see if one is causing the problem.

3

I notice you are using a Beta version of Chrome. I am having no problems using Chrome Version 74.0.3729.157 (Official Build) (64-bit) on macOS 10.14.3 and MODX Revolution 2.7.1-pl with the default dashboard.

Perhaps it might also be worth submitting a bug report to Google or the or the Chromium project

4

Any console logs running? I have seen some crazy performance hits from excessive logs.

5

Yeah, it’s definitely the widgets. All of them though, not just the feeds. Or at least all of the visible ones. If I disable all of them (all except “Configuration Check”), the Dashboard performs just like any other page in the manager.

6

Agreed. I’m going to install a build from the regular channel and see if the issue persists first.

Not that I’m aware of, unless it’s something behind the scenes that the beta channel build of Chrome is doing (since everything works fine in Safari and Firefox Nightly).