Search
Ten-Ton Widgets
15.10.2019
At a recent conference talk (sorry, I forget which one), there was a quick example of poor web performance in the form of a third-party widget. The example showed a site that installed the widget in order add a "email us" button fixed to the bottom right of the viewport. Not even a live-chat widget...
Let’s Make a Fancy, but Uncomplicated Page Loader
15.10.2019
It’s pretty common to see a loading state on sites these days, particularly as progressive web apps and reactive sites are on the rise. It’s one way to improve "perceived" performance — that is, making it feel as though the site is loading faster than it actually is.
There’s no shortage of ways...
WordPress Plugin Overload? Give Jetpack a Try!
15.10.2019
The WordPress ecosystem has a plentiful supply of plugins that offer everything from AMP to Zapier integration and so, so, so many other things in between. It's a significant contributor to what makes WordPress great because plugins can account for the needs of nearly any website.
How many plugins...
Weekly Platform News: Impact of Third-Party Code, Passive Mixed Content, Countries with the Slowest Connections
10.10.2019
In this week's roundup, Lighthouse sheds light on third-party scripts, insecure resources will get blocked on secure sites, and many country connection speeds are still trying to catch up to others... literally.
Measure the impact of third-party code during page load
Lighthouse, Chrome’s built-in...
Recipes for Performance Testing Single Page Applications in WebPageTest
10.10.2019
WebPageTest is an online tool and an Open Source project to help developers audit the performance of their websites. As a Web Performance Evangelist at Theodo, I use it every single day. I am constantly amazed at what it offers to the web development community at large and the web performance folks...
Images Are Not Static Content
10.10.2019
We constantly hear about the importance of keeping websites lean and fast. A fast-loading website makes users more satisfied, and satisfied users spend more time and money on your website. However, website optimization is a complex task, as there is not one silver bullet to fix all of the issues...
Preloading Pages Just Before They are Needed
27.9.2019
The typical journey for a person browsing a website: view a page, click a link, browser loads new page. That's assuming no funny business like a Single Page App, which still follows that journey, but the browser doesn't load a new page — the client fakes it for the sake of a snappier...
Weekly Platform News: Layout Shifts, Stalled High-Bitrate Videos, Screenshots in Firefox
26.9.2019
In this week's roundup: fighting shifty layouts, some videos might be a bit stalled, and a new way to take screenshots in Firefox.
Let's get into the news!
Identifying the causes of layout shifts during page load
You can now use WebPageTest to capture any layout shifts that occur on your website...
How Web Content Can Affect Power Usage
18.9.2019
Because we know that all people with battery-powered devices are constantly concerned about their battery levels, and that websites are significant consumers of that battery power, we should probably think about this stuff a lot more than we do.
I'd expect the browser itself to be our main ally...
5G Will Definitely Make the Web Slower, Maybe
16.9.2019
Scott Jehl has written this wonderful piece about how 5G is on the horizon and how it could cause problems for users. But first, he starts by talking about the overwhelming positive news about it:
[...] as it matures 5G is predicted to improve network speeds dramatically. Carriers are predicting...
“Off The Main Thread”
10.9.2019
JavaScript is what they call "single-threaded." As Brian Barbour puts it:
This means it has one call stack and one memory heap.
We all feel a symptom of that regularly in the form of performance jank and non-interactivity on elements or entire sites. If we give JavaScript lots of jobs and it gets...
Fast Software
3.9.2019
There have been some wonderfully interconnected things about fast software lately.
We talk a lot of performance on the web. We can make things a little faster here and there. We see rises in success metrics with rises in performance. I find those type of charts very satisfying. But perhaps even...
Jeremy Keith – Building the Web
23.8.2019
I really enjoyed this interview with Jeremy Keith on the state of the web, how things have changed in recent years and why he’s a mix of optimistic and nervous for the future.
One thing that caught my attention during the interview more than anything was where Jeremy started discussing how folks...
Weekly Platform News: Improving UX on Slow Connections, a Tip for Writing Alt Text and a Polyfill for the HTML loading attribute
23.8.2019
In this week's roundup, how to determine a slow connection, what we should put into alt text for images, and a new polyfill for the HTML loading attribute, plus more.
Detecting users on slow connections
Algolia is using the Network Information API (see the API’s Chrome status page) to detect users...
Using rel=”preconnect” to establish network connections early and increase performance
20.8.2019
Milica Mihajlija:
Adding rel=preconnect to a <link> informs the browser that your page intends to establish a connection to another domain, and that you'd like the process to start as soon as possible. Resources will load more quickly because the setup process has already been completed...
Bitcoiners Brace for More Performance Art and Another ‘Satoshi Reveal’
17.8.2019
On Friday, a variety of paid press releases were published stemming from a company called Satoshi Nakamoto Renaissance Holdings, a firm that claims a big “reveal” is coming on Sunday, August 18. According to the announcement, Satoshi Nakamoto will divulge his “real-life...
Accessibility and web performance are not features, they’re the baseline
16.8.2019
This week I’ve been brooding about web performance and accessibility. It all began when Ethan Marcotte made a lot of great notes about the accessibility issues that are common with AMP:
In the recordings above, I’m trying to navigate through the AMP Story. And as I do, VoiceOver describes a page...
Weekly Platform News: HTML Loading Attribute, the Main ARIA Specifications, and Moving from iFrame to Shadow DOM
15.8.2019
In this week's roundup of platform news, Chrome introduces a new attribute for loading, accessibility specifications for web developers, and the BBC moves visualizations to the Shadow DOM.
Chrome ships the loading attribute
The HTML loading attribute for lazy-loading images and iframes is...
Bitcoin Cash Price Analysis: BCH Recovers From The Fall Of $305.2; Will It Maintain Its Performance Today?
12.8.2019
BCH coin performance over the past 5 days has been somewhat unstable. On 7-Aug-19 at 13:00 UTC, it had reached a high of $345.9. For the next 2 days, Bitcoin Cash started to move downwards at almost the same pace. There was a sharp fall on 9-Aug-19 and price touched $308.9 at 10:55 UTC. Despite...
Bitcoin Cash Price Analysis: BCH’s YTD Performance Is Exceptional, Will It Maintain Its Efficiency?
10.8.2019
Let us compare the price of the coin since the beginning of the year until now. BCH was valued around $169.8 on 3-Jan-19. The coin was moving at almost the same pace since January till the end of March,19 with the trend being bearish. On 1-Apr-19 due to a sharp rise in the price, BCH …
The...