Web Performance News, May 2020
Hey there,
There were some big announcements and updates in May. Let’s dive into it!
The new major version of Lighthouse has been released. TADAAM! Lighthouse is one of the most popular tools to measure web performance. In the link above you’ll find what’s changed and why the score is different now. There is also a new version of Lighthouse CI available and we updated the docker image that we use to run tests continuously on pixboost.com.
Google did a GOODle and released a new set of metrics that impacts users the most. They called them Web Vitals. The core set includes just 3 items that you are measuring on the real users opposed to synthetic metrics from tools like Lighthouse. I really love an idea of simplifying the web performance and making it accessible for everyone: “Site owners should not have to be performance gurus in order to understand the quality of experience they are delivering to their users. The Web Vitals initiative aims to simplify the landscape, and help sites focus on the metrics that matter most, the Core Web Vitals.”. If you are interested in the story behind the metrics then you’ll find this link interesting.
@hdjirdeh and @addyosmani wrote about optimising First Input Delay (FID) metric. Worth to mention that it’s one of the metrics from Core Web Vitals. You’ll find good advice on how to tame JS execution on your web pages.
Keeping subject of metrics hot @nicpenam did an amazing job by creating a website with links to useful docs from Chromium Speed Metrics team!
Chromium launched a new way of blocking ads that consumes too much resources on your device. This will eventually land on Chrome around August. I think this is a good step forward to make the Internet a better place.
Tim Kadlec wrote an awesome piece on “The Cost of Javascript Frameworks”. In the article he is using the real numbers from HTTP Archive to compare the big 4 — JQuery, React, Angular and Vue.js. The questions in conclusion are right on point and I enjoyed reading the blog. Sadly said, in my experience performance becomes important only once the first release is shipped. We need to change this mentality! And to add to this @scottjehl posted a tweet that shows a stat with median web page size on the Internet just passed 2MB:
That’s it for today. Stay safe and load fast!
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