Using theTape Chrome Extension & Google Dev Tools: Audits-Performance
This week, I started the Vets Who Code cohort. It reminded me a lot of my first week at Marine Corps boot camp (except no one was screaming in my face, I wasn’t getting smoked on the quarterdeck, and there were no sand fleas biting me). What I mean by this is, I was being introduced to a new culture, that of a web developer. Just like back in boot camp, I am learning about an unfamiliar culture that has its own acronyms and language. Sure, I know some HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, but I am just learning about what it is like to be a working developer.
One of our assignments this week was to go to our favorite website, use one of the Chrome Extensions that we installed, and play around with the Google Developer Tools (Dev Tools). The website that I chose was Midcurrent (www.midcurrent.com). Midcurrent is a fly fishing website/blog that offers great how-to videos and articles on fly fishing. I like being able to get out on the river, to enjoy the peace and beauty of nature.
Tape
The Chrome Extension that I tested was Tape. I love how you can measure the different elements of the website. Say you like the size of the header on midcurrent.com and would like to make the header on your page the same size. You can use Tape to figure out the dimensions. It will even show you how much padding was used for the element.
Google Dev Tools: Audits-Performance
The Google Dev Tool that I decided to use to was Audits. Audits look at the websites Performance, Progressive Web App, Accessibility, Best Practices, and SEO. Today, I just want to focus on Performance.
Midcurrent.com got a score of 29 on Performance because of the Speed Index, Time to Interactive, First CPU Idle, and Estimated Input Latency scores.
The cool thing about the Audits tool is that it will make suggestions on how you can improve your websites Performance. Audits made suggestions on how to speed up the load time for midcurrent.com and other suggestions to improve the performance of the site.
Audits also tell you what you are doing correctly, by showing what things passed the audit. Midcurrent.com had 13 things that passed the Performance Audit.
Audits tool is a great tool for developers to use to improve the performance and other areas of their websites. It will definitely be one of the tools that I will run on all my sites.
