DOM Interactive timing not reflecting the readiness/interactive state of page

[suresh230591]

Hi,

We are in a process of choosing the Key performance metric for our Key user action which best describe the user experience of end customer. We were assessing the DOM Interactive metric for some of load action. What we found is that DOM Interactive timing is not reflecting the interactive state of page.

See below waterfall for one of load action, app team said that until the XHR request highlighted in yellow are completed, page in not ready to receive the input.

Looking at the timing
DOM interactive =8.95 s

Yellow request started after DOM complete at 11:10 s
Last Yellow call finished at 13:68 s

As per app team page will be interactive after 13.68 where as DT saying it is interactive at 8.95 s. Can someone explain how DT detect interactive state of page?

In such scenario how we should choose the metric.

Thanks

Suresh

[zietho · Accepted solution]

Dear @Suresh K.

you find details of how these metrics are calculated here: https://www.dynatrace.com/support/help/shortlink/user-action-metrics#milestone-metrics

In general, we use the browser's resource timings to report these metric back to Dynatrace, therefore when DOM interactive happens isn't decided by any algorithm of ours but by the browser.

When you also want to include these XHR requests then its probably best to look at other available metrics and whether they would cover your needs

hope that helps.

regards

Thomas

[suresh230591]

Thanks @Thomas Z.

I our case visually complete is the best fit as these calls get completed within VC time.

[AntonioSousa]

Hi Suresh,

I don't use DOM interactive, as it is unreliable in my point of view. "Visually Complete" is
a better metric. But there is no one metric that suits it all. You should test what's better in your case, and as Thomas said, Dynatrace gets these values from the browser. If there are doubts about what is happening in your applications, I would suggest getting even more detail from the "Developers Tool" in your browser.