Tabs and their content load slowly

🤔 Problem

When accessing a page with Navitabs macros, the tabs and their content take a long time to load.

Cause

Confluence Data Center/Server allows the nesting of macros within other macros. For example, it is possible to nest one level of Navitabs tabs within other Navitabs macros. Other load-intense macros include:

• Page properties report

• Jira macros for issues, roadmaps, etc.

• Charts of all kinds

• Attachments

Navitabs macros work by immediately loading and rendering all the pages within their structure, including any nested macros in pages.

Example: If there are 10 tabs gathered through the Labeltabs macro, all 10 tabs and their content are immediately rendered and ready for display, even if the user doesn’t click on the inactive tabs. The Navitabs macro will only finish loading once the entire content has been rendered.

⏲️ This results in a high loading time every single time a user accesses the page.

🌱 Solution

Use nested macros mindfully: Only use complex nesting if this is absolutely necessary for your use case. This is also highly relevant if you are considering migrating to Confluence Cloud in the future.

Try to reduce the macro complexity on pages that are accessed frequently and are therefore often impacted by slow page load. Possible workarounds:

• Use Navitabs' Childtabs and Labeltabs for pages with relatively simple content.
  Use built-in macros like “Children Display” or “Content by Label” or insert direct links if the child or referenced pages contain complex macros.

• Use Labeltabs with very specific labels to avoid the loading of irrelevant content.

• If you have to use a generic label for Labeltabs, limit the number of tabs displayed in the macro settings by

  • limiting the label to the current space.

  • reducing “Max Number of Tabs” (default is 20 pages).

  • using two generic labels and combining them with AND.

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