Revisiting Content Server browser performance
Six months ago I put together a three-part (one, two, three) series on the difference between the Smart UI and the Classic UI. Well with the release of Content Server 16.2.8 over the weekend it was time to dust off the project and run some tests.
Some adjustments
With the quarterly patches, there have been some changes to the layout of both the Classic UI and the Smart UI.
Classic UI selectors
await page.click('div#browseCoreDiv > table.browseTable > tbody > tr[data-tnode="Performance Test"] > td.browseItemName > a')Smart UI selectors
await page.click('div.csui-table-cell-name-div > a[title="Performance Test"]');So let's run some tests
So for the tests, I am only using the CGI extension via IIS — what we are hoping for is a reduction in the gap between the two UI’s (for more information about the tests I am performing they are explained here)
This was a pretty amazing result. Extremely close with the Smart UI edging out the Classic UI with an average of 6.02 seconds per test (with a median of (5.99 seconds) compared to the Classic UI’s which was an average of 6.13 (median of 6.025). It certainly means that for users browsing those tops level structures in a typical taxonomy this is good news.
The 100 document test, on the other hand, was similar to what I saw back in November. Here we see a clear win to the Classic UI ( 6.17102 seconds average and a median of 6.0755 seconds) over the Smart UI ( 9.95 seconds average with a median of 9.76 seconds).
So what is going on here? At first glance, it is more data. For the folder test, there is no version data for the Smart UI to return, and viewer actions to perform.
Whereas for a Document (or a folder full of documents) there are more actions and more version data to return
So where does this leave us (Conclusion time)
Overall this is a good result for Smart UI, Classic UI is still quicker — but the gap is closing. For people who are using the Smart UI on previous versions of Content Server, there are real improvements in upgrading.
There are still gaps in the Smart UI, but it does still offer a simplified experience for end users, and for those who remain on classic the new richer API’s that are becoming available with the changes to Smart UI are on offer here as well.
