I recently had a problem with the loading times of some admin pages caused by another plugin, and while troubleshooting I happened to discover that L&L’s CSS and JS files are loading on some pages where they are not actually needed. Since I don’t develop plugins myself, it’s difficult for me to assess whether this would be easy to implement or even make sense, but since the files are about 0.5 MB in total, I think it would be nice if the loading could be restricted to keep the backend clean and lean.
The files in question are the following:
JS files:
scsslint.min.js
jsonlint.min.js
jshint.min.js
htmlhint.min.js
csslint.min.js
codemirror.min.js
CSS files:
codemirror-theme-light.min.css
codemirror.min.css
These files are loaded on the following wp-admin pages:
on all taxonomy and custom taxonomy pages (list view, edit view)
on all attachment pages (list view, grid view, edit attachment view)
on all edit post pages (core post types and custom post types; no matter if a post type has a single page or not)
within WP Customizer
on edit menu pages (/wp-admin/nav-menus.php)
on most ACF pages (ACF option pages, edit ACF field group, edit ACF CPT, edit ACF custom taxonomy, ACF tools)
on edit user profile pages
within Elementor Editor, regardless of whether a tangible template widget is present or not
I am by no means able to speak on behalf of the Tangible developers or team, but my take on this is that it’s a ‘necessary evil’, since the L&L editor can exist in so many places. (All the listed files are related to the editor itself. It uses Codemirror, and the hint/lint files are the ones checking the validity of the code, etc.)
That said, you could possibly unload these files, in places you don’t need them, using a plugin like Autoptimize.
thanks for pointing that out, there may be use cases I hadn’t thought of because I’m so used to my own working routine. Still, I can’t really imagine how the L&L editor could be used in some places like the media library or on ACF settings pages etc.
Manually unloading should be possible with autoptimize or just wp_dequeue_script / wp_deregister_script, yes, but I think it would be better if this is handled by the plugin itself, in case this is some kind of oversight. But as I said, not being a plugin developer, I’m not sure how this is normally handled.
We discovered that Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) was causing performance issues for some users. This was because ACF was loading all of its field scripts and styles on every admin page.
One of the fields that ACF registers is the “Tangible Template field”, which allows users to use the template editor. To improve performance, our developer has made the Template field optional. This means that users can now choose whether or not to load the Template field scripts and styles.
To enable or disable the Template field, users can visit the new Tangible → Settings page. This change was released in L&L version 3.3.0.
Thanks for the update, ghen. Just tested it and can confirm that the CSS and JS files from L&L no longer load when the setting is disabled. I really appreciate your efforts!
I will get in touch with the ACF guys and ask if they can do anything about it.