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Speed Matters Newsletter

NEW! Web bloat, neglected optimizations & lessons from Pinterest and The NY Times

Jul 29, 2024

Hi <<First Name>>,

There's something for everyone in this edition of Speed Matters – from inspiring case studies to the (possibly even more inspiring) best song about web performance I've ever heard. 

Keep scrolling to learn...
  • How web bloat affects users with slow devices
  • 15 page speed optimizations that top sites ignore (at their own risk)
  • Enhancing web performance at The New York Times
  • How Pinterest prevents and detects regressions
  • What do we actually mean when we talk about "continuous performance monitoring"?
  • The best song about web performance you've never heard
  • And this month's performance hero: Michelle Vu!
Until next month,
Tammy
m: @tammy
t: @tameverts

How web bloat affects users with slow devices 

Dan Luu explores at length why the web is worse than ever for people using low-end devices:

"CPU performance for web apps hasn't scaled nearly as quickly as bandwidth so, while more of the web is becoming accessible to people with low-end connections, more of the web is becoming inaccessible to people with low-end devices even if they have high-end connections."

15 page speed optimizations that top sites ignore (at their own risk) 

I recently analyzed test results for 20 top websites and discovered many of them do not take advantage of widely recommended optimizations (including low-hanging fruit like don't lazy-load your LCP image!) that could make their pages faster, their users happier, and their businesses more successful.
  • 19/20 don't have an efficient cache policy
  • 17/20 fail at reducing unused JS
  • 16/20 prevent bfcache restoration
This raises the question: If Lighthouse scores and audits are important performance and UX guidelines, shouldn't we be concerned that so many sites are failing many audits?

Enhancing The New York Times web performance with React 18 

The software engineering team at The New York Times places a high value on page speed, SEO, and keeping up to date with the latest technology. For their React-based sites, the upgrade to React 18 promised a performance boost and access to exciting new features.

In this detailed case study, Ilya Gurevich shares the exciting results of the upgrade to the Times' flagship core news site, including:
  • INP scores in the p75 range dropped by roughly 30%
  • Re-renders were cut essentially in half!

Performance Hero: Michelle Vu!

Continuing our series of Performance Heroes, this month we celebrate Michelle Vu! Michelle is one of the most knowledgeable, helpful, kind people you could ever hope to meet. As a founding member of Pinterest's performance team, she has created an incredibly strong culture of performance throughout Pinterest. She's also pioneered important custom metrics and practices, like Pinner Wait Time and performance budgets.

Most recently, Michelle has written an excellent three-part series of articles about how Pinterest detects performance regressions. See below!

Detecting web performance regressions at Pinterest

It's not a coincidence that Pinterest provides an enviably fast user experience. Their performance engineering team was an early pioneer of custom metrics (such as Pinner Wait Time) and performance budgets – using these strategies to fight regressions and stay fast. In this 3-part series, Michelle Vu shares:

What do we mean when we talk about "continuous performance monitoring"?

The hardest part of web performance isn’t making your site faster. It’s keeping it fast. It's all too common to hear about companies devoting significant efforts to optimizing their site, only to find their page speed right back where it started a few months later.

Continuous monitoring is the solution. Find out how and why you need to create guardrails to prevent performance and UX regressions:
  • Performance budgets
  • Automated testing
  • Detailed diagnostics
  • Annotated test history

"If I Didn't Load Test" 

I can say, without hyperbole, this is the best song about web performance I've ever heard. Well done, Scott Moore. (For real, you should give it a listen. It's super catchy!)

In case you missed it...
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