Import Web Performance with Todd Gardner

Frontend Masters - Todd Gardner

Introduction

More search ranking & more people visiting your site.

Why is Performance Important

• Google will rank you on your performance
• Angry and furstrated users don't stick around long

Psychology of waiting

• People want to start early
• People will wait for value

Measuring Web Performance

• The new way: Web Vitals
  • FCP - First Contentful Paint ( < 2.5s ) - The time until the user sees an indication that the page is loading -> Response Quick
  • LCP - Lagrest Contentful Paint - The time util the user sees most of the page and believes it is (almost) ready -> Get to the point
  • CLS - Cumulative Layout Shift ( < 0.1 ) - The movement distance and impact of page elements during entire lifetime of the document the user sees -> Don't move stuff around
  • FID - First Input Delay ( < 100ms ) - The browser time delay between the user's first click and execution of application code -> Don't load too much

Use Lighthouse from running performance report

Where Do We Measure From?

Chrome UX Report Compare Tool

Field data is different from Lab data. What you see on your machine will be different from other people on the internet.

Improving Web Performance

Performance is where is the money comes from. For short time durations, the difference must be at least 20% for most people to care.

Programmatically retrieves performance data with Performance API

// Performance API

performance.getEntries()

Capture Performance Data

// Wait for page ready and start observe metric
//
// first-contentful-paint (paint)
// largest-contentful-paint
// layout-shift
// first-input

data = {
  fcp: 0,
};

var fcpObserver = new PerformanceObserver(function handleFCP(entryList) {
  var entries = entryList.getEntries() || [];
  entries.forEach(function (entry) {
    if (entry.name === 'first-contentful-paint') {
      data.fcp = entry.startTime;
      console.log('Recorded FCP Performance: ' + data.fcp);
    }
  });
}).observe({ type: 'paint', buffered: true });

How to Improve Performance

Do fewer things