Wp-calypso: "Flash" of visitors/visits bars across Stats and Insights page

[eamcgill90]

Steps to reproduce

1. Starting at URL: https://wordpress.com/stats/day/[anysite]
2. If you do not see it upon loading the page, try refreshing.

What I expected

There should be no flash of these bars.

What happened instead

Browser / OS version

Happening across Safari, Firefox and Chrome across Mac OS and PC
(Am on a team meetup and my team is able to recreate the issue as well)

Screenshot / Video

Example videos:
https://d.pr/v/1VTaVS
https://d.pr/i/sEFWaj

[kriskarkoski]

I was seeing this for some time, but can not reproduce at this time. @eamcgill90 Are you still able to reproduce this?

[lancewillett]

I've been seeing this multiple times a day — both Safari and Chrome desktop browsers, with different users.

Seems kind of bad... it looks clunky and broken for 1-2 seconds before correcting itself.

[kriskarkoski]

After some further testing I think something in stats must be cached locally so this only happens consistently the first time you view them until that's cleared.

I think I've been seeing it often when checking user's sites that I haven't loaded before, but couldn't reproduce on my main sites because I've viewed them all recently. Once I checked a site I check less frequently I was able to reproduce the issue.

[katiebethbrown]

I can still reproduce this as well, but only only the first stats load for any given site.

[eamcgill90]

I can no longer reproduce the issue.

[lancewillett]

Heh, funny that a "welcome back" behavior would be to show the broken UI for a second. 😄

@eamcgill90 That's likely why you don't see it again, already cached from a recent visit.

What is likely the underlying fix is to preload or fetch the bars before rending the graph.

[lancewillett]

Shared this in Slack today to hopefully get a look from a @Automattic/team-calypso developer. In case it's something that might indicate a timing issue or performance change in recent refactoring. CC @griffbrad

[simison]

This could depend on CSS bundles loading order, which depends on order you visit pages on Calypso.

[tyxla]

I've been trying to reproduce, but unsuccessfully. Is it possible that this occurs only on certain sites? I've started clean multiple times, for different sites (with little and with a LOT of stats) and no luck. Can anyone reproduce consistently with a certain site/user?

[lancewillett]

Here's one way to reproduce, with a user that has more than 1 site — ideally 5 to 10 sites or more that you don't visit often.

Steps:

1. Log in with Safari, and go to Stats (/stats/day/example.com
2. Click "Switch Site" at top left of sidebar
3. Choose another site from the list — one you haven't used in a while
4. Watch the stats graph; it'll be all the lines for a second or two

[tyxla]

Sorry about that, but I'm currently on a long leave, perhaps someone else could take a look?

[lancewillett]

Testing in Safari, Firefox, and Chrome today across 3 different WordPress.com users I was not able to repeat the behavior any more.

Closing for now as "works for me."