Why do I receive a Stop Running Script message on IE8 and IE9?

The Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) browsers, IE8 and IE9, provide significantly poorer performance than later versions of IE or other modern browsers. Users often see the Warning Message shown below in Step 1.

There have been significant performance improvements in browsers in recent years.  Metric Insights' technical specialists have found that as the volume of tiles; i.e., content in the Home Page, grows, IE8/IE9 performance becomes less than ideal.  Our internal testing determined that this particular issue with IE does not go away until IE10.  We also have experienced that this warning appears when you try to load a large number of tiles (well over 1,000) into the IE8 or IE9 browser.

The script that is causing the issue is actually loading tile data and must be loaded completely in order to make search work on the page. We have made a number of improvements in caching and now keep both a user and a session cache of tile information that loads right away and then is synchronized with database content.  This has resulted in a big improvement in page load time on modern browsers for subsequent loads of the Home Page during the same session but this does not benefit IE8 or IE9 users because these browsers do not have very good client-side caching support.

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR MITIGATION

Metric insights recommends that your organization use the following guidelines to improve loading of the Home Page of all users:

  1. Upgrade to IE10 or above or else reduce the number of tiles visible to the user
  2. Encourage users to keep the tile count to a manageable level so that the IE8/IE9 browser warning is avoided.  If your system has hundreds of Dimension Values associated with multiple elements, it is easy to exceed a manageable number of tiles.  Being thoughtful in implementation and security model definition is the key to having a Home Page that is not cluttered unnecessarily.  Users can easily find tiles that are not visible on the Home Page elements by using a Filter that results in a list of Hidden elements being generated as illustrated in Step 2 below.  Steps that will reduce the number of visible tiles include:
  • Hide an individual element from the Home Page  See Step 3 below
  • Use the Dimension Editor to hide tiles of Dimensions that have a large number of Dimension Values by many of them making them not visible .  For more information, see Step 4 below and/or review this article on Dimension Values.  

1. Warning Message

Warning Message
  1. If IE is slowing down while trying to load your Home Page, it provides the warning shown above
  2. Click Yes to stop the load

2. Find Hidden Elements

Find Hidden Elements

On the Home Page, you can see a list of hidden elements when you search or filter and then access that hidden content via a link that opens a pop-up with a list of hidden elements.  With this capability, you can surface only a subset of content directly on the Home Page and make more detailed content available via searching or filtering.

  1. Enter a search criteria and/or set a filter
  2. Review the list of displayed elements meeting your search argument and or filter criteria
  3. Click the Show Hidden Items link in the black bar area that displays: "There are <quantity of tiles> hidden items
  4. Click on the element's Name to open its Chart/Report Viewer

3. Hide an entire Element

Hide an entire Element

At any time, an Administrator or a Power User with edit access to an element can make it not visible on the Home Page; a setting that is especially useful for elements with low usage.  

 

4. Hide a Dimension Value

Hide a Dimension Value

To make a specific dimension invisible in the home page, follow the following process:

  1. Open the Dimension Editor and navigate to the Division Values section
  2. In the Dimension Values grid, click the Edit icon on the row with the Value to be hidden
  3. Show as Tile:  Set to "No"
  4. Save

NOTE:  When a Dimension Value is hidden, all elements that use this Dimension will have this specific value excluded from the Home Page by default; however, a user can make a specific Dimension Value for an element visible in his/her Favorites section by adding that item to Favorites from the Viewer.