Pages are loading twice

[davidatmire]

Describe the bug
When you open some DSpace 7 pages, they appear to load twice, which is confusing for the user.

I have been able to reproduce this at least on homepage / collection page / item page even if it doesn't happen systematically.
This behaviour can be experienced on demo7 : https://demo7.dspace.org/home

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Open https://demo7.dspace.org/home (or other collection / item pages) in a new browser tab
2. The page is first displayed for a short time
3. Then a blank page appears for a short time too
4. Finally the page reappears and is displayed properly

Expected behavior
Pages should only be loading once

Related work
@artlowel has already identified that

• the first page displayed is the server side rendered version
• then JS kicks in and it starts loading
• then you see the client side rendered version

[MarisArins]

I have not seen it in particular, but can this be somehow caused by UI language change ? That is causing UI reload.

[tdonohue]

@davidatmire and @artlowel : I've seen this behavior. I admit, I had assumed this was somewhat "expected" on the first page load, because the page starts as server-side rendered and then is re-rendered by the client. That said, I'd love to see this fixed. Is there a recommendation/suggestion for how this would be fixed?

For now, moving to 7.2 board with high priority and estimate TBD.

(@MarisArins : This happens on first page load (first time visiting the site in your browser), and is definitely not caused by a UI language change. The UI language change does result in a similar reload and it may be impacted by this same issue noted in this ticket.)

[tdonohue]

Duplicated (with video demo) in #1391

[tdonohue]

@artlowel : Per today's meeting discussion, assigning this to you / your team & adding your 30hr estimate. Feel free to start implementation

[tdonohue]

Corrected estimate to 30hrs. I mixed this up with a different ticket.