How to avoid unnecessary calls in 8.2 Content Editor

Question

recently we upgarded to sitecore 8.2 and while selecting an item in the content editor i see so may calls to the server

/sitecore/shell/Applications/Content-Editor?ic=Apps%2F48x48%2FPencil.png&he=Content%20Editor&cl=0

/sitecore/shell/~/xaml/Sitecore.Shell.Applications.Analytics.TrackingFieldDetails.aspx?db=master&id=%7BD2130E52-B828-4383-A3A0-AD45DBE53A10%7D&la=en&vs=1&fld=%7BB0A67B2A-8B07-4E0B-8809-69F751709806%7D

/sitecore/shell/~/xaml/Sitecore.Shell.Applications.Security.SecurityDetails.aspx?db=master&id=%7BD2130E52-B828-4383-A3A0-AD45DBE53A10%7D&la=en&vs=1&fld=%7BDEC8D2D5-E3CF-48B6-A653-8E69E2716641%7D

/sitecore/shell/~/xaml/Sitecore.Shell.Applications.ContentEditor.Editors.Folder.aspx?id=%7BD2130E52-B828-4383-A3A0-AD45DBE53A10%7D&la=en&language=en&vs=1&version=1&database=master&readonly=0&db=master

/sitecore/shell/Applications/Buckets/Services/Search.ashx

Do i need all these calls ?how do i disable few (we have disabled tracking ) still some tracking related call is getting fired .

how do i improve content editor performance ? Am getting kill session in chrome often when i use sitecore and switch between items. please advice

Answer 1

Most of the calls you mentioned are related to Sitecore Standard Fields.

E.g. if you Content Editor is about to display Tracking field in a user friendly way, it does extra call to TrackingFieldDetails.aspx.

What you can do is to uncheck Standard Fields in the VIEW tab of the ribbon (or use CTRL + SHIFT + ALT + T keyboard shortcut). That will hide the Standard Fields but in most of cases you don't use them anyway and you can always show them again if needed.

Answer 2

Just to add to what Marek is saying; Content Editor performance (once hardware is out of the way) is really about the fields being shown. As such, the recommended practice of not displaying Standard Fields unless you need them - should be the first thing to check.

If you still experience performance issues, this is what you should be looking at:

Hardware

Make sure the hardware running your solution is adequate. I cannot possibly tell you what "adequate" would be, it really depends on so many factors - but make sure the server (or your machine, if running locally) has enough RAM and enough disk space. First and foremost.

More fields

Second thing to check is the actual fields you have, on the items you switch between. Certain field types can slow down a Content Editor tremendously, if configured incorrectly. For instance if you make heavy use of DropList or DropLink fields and these are all configured with an expensive Sitecore Query as their datasource - this can slow your CE experience down quite massively.

Answer 3

A couple of other things you can do to help with Content Editor Performance are to:

1. Disable Rendering of all items in the tree on initial load. This will mean a slower load when browsing lower levels of the tree but should make the initial page load quicker when browsing around content editor:

       <setting name="ContentEditor.RenderCollapsedSections">
           <patch:attribute name="value">false</patch:attribute>
       </setting>
   

2. Turn off Security checking on tree nodes. This has one downside that means content editors will see parent items in the tree they shouldn't see and get a error message saying they don't have access if they click on it.

       <setting name="ContentEditor.CheckSecurityOnTreeNodes">
           <patch:attribute name="value">false</patch:attribute>
       </setting>
   

3. Turn off Checking for children on tree nodes. This has one downside that means content editors will see an arrow for child items in the tree (even if there are no child items) then if they click on it it will disappear.

   <setting name="ContentEditor.CheckHasChildrenOnTreeNodes">
       <patch:attribute name="value">false</patch:attribute>
   </setting>
   

It's worth noting that you need to experiment with these settings as you will see different performance gains depending on how many items you have in your tree. If you have less than 500 items you might not see much improvement for some of these settings.