Upgrade to Pro
— share decks privately, control downloads, hide ads and more …
Speaker Deck
Features
Speaker Deck
PRO
Sign in
Sign up for free
Search
Search
Re-evaluating Front-end Performance Best Practices
Search
benvinegar
April 21, 2015
Programming
15
1.6k
Re-evaluating Front-end Performance Best Practices
Fluent 2015
benvinegar
April 21, 2015
Tweet
Share
More Decks by benvinegar
See All by benvinegar
Getting the most out of JavaScript errors
benvinegar
1
340
JavaScript Error Reporting (and Why We Can't Have Nice Things)
benvinegar
0
230
FSTO: Re-evaluating Front-end Peformance Best Practices
benvinegar
9
1k
Other Decks in Programming
See All in Programming
AIコーディングAgentとの向き合い方
eycjur
0
270
時間軸から考えるTerraformを使う理由と留意点
fufuhu
15
4.7k
Android端末で実現するオンデバイスLLM 2025
masayukisuda
1
140
アプリの "かわいい" を支えるアニメーションツールRiveについて
uetyo
0
230
Introducing ReActionView: A new ActionView-compatible ERB Engine @ Rails World 2025, Amsterdam
marcoroth
0
680
CJK and Unicode From a PHP Committer
youkidearitai
PRO
0
110
Processing Gem ベースの、2D レトロゲームエンジンの開発
tokujiros
2
120
rage against annotate_predecessor
junk0612
0
170
Namespace and Its Future
tagomoris
6
700
2025 年のコーディングエージェントの現在地とエンジニアの仕事の変化について
azukiazusa1
24
12k
Kiroで始めるAI-DLC
kaonash
2
580
もうちょっといいRubyプロファイラを作りたい (2025)
osyoyu
1
420
Featured
See All Featured
Save Time (by Creating Custom Rails Generators)
garrettdimon
PRO
32
1.5k
GraphQLとの向き合い方2022年版
quramy
49
14k
RailsConf 2023
tenderlove
30
1.2k
The Myth of the Modular Monolith - Day 2 Keynote - Rails World 2024
eileencodes
26
3k
A Tale of Four Properties
chriscoyier
160
23k
GitHub's CSS Performance
jonrohan
1032
460k
GraphQLの誤解/rethinking-graphql
sonatard
72
11k
Statistics for Hackers
jakevdp
799
220k
Six Lessons from altMBA
skipperchong
28
4k
[RailsConf 2023] Rails as a piece of cake
palkan
57
5.8k
Git: the NoSQL Database
bkeepers
PRO
431
66k
Navigating Team Friction
lara
189
15k
Transcript
re-evaluating front-end performance best practices
@bentlegen
None
None
car·go cult
cargo cult web performance
how does it happen?
deprecated … • books • blog posts • best practice
guides • StackOverflow answers • performance analysis tools • practices on live websites • conference talks like this one
the agenda • hostname sharding • for-loop array length caching
• dynamic script insertion
hostname sharding
in the beginning (HTTP 1.0)
with more connections 2 4 8 www www www
with hostname sharding 2 2 2 www www1, www2 www1
www2 www3 www4
still common Website # Static Hosts plus.google.com 4 tumblr.com 4
alibaba.com 4 theverge.com 4 ebay.com 6 businessinsider.com 6 netflix.com 11!
None
not a big deal anymore
browser connections/origin Browser # HTTP / origin Chrome 42 6
Firefox 37 8 Safari 7 6 IE 8, 9 6 IE 10 8 IE 11 13 bit.ly/rprf-bscope
chrome caps parallel image requests at 10 anyways bit.ly/rprf-bscope
rise of https stalled/ proxy negotiation dns! lookup connection +
tls/ssl time-to- first-byte download tls/ssl handshake
and http/2 will make all this irrelevant anyways
“2 domains for non-SPDY modern browsers” – Souders in 2013
bit.ly/rprf-2domains
etsy case study • 4 image domains → 2 •
50-80 ms faster for image heavy pages • 30-50 ms faster overall • up to 500ms faster on mobile bit.ly/rprf-etsy
the web’s moving on Website # Static Hosts netflix.com* 1
nytimes.com 1 youtube.com 2 twitter.com 2 facebook.com 2 pinterest.com 2 bbc.co.uk 2 etsy.com 3
looping
specifically array length caching in for loops
for (var i = 0, len = arr.length; i <
len; i++) { // do stuff } for (var i = 0; i < arr.length; i++) { // do stuff } vs
None
None
None
does it still hold?
cache vs no cache Chrome 42 Firefox 37 Safari 7
IE9+ IE8 ops/second (normalized), bigger is better cache no cache 78%
V8 (and other browsers) recognize this pattern bit.ly/rprf-v8opt
uncached version
cached version
“we should start assuming that our code is optimized” -
Vyacheslav Egorov, V8 bit.ly/rprf-v8opt
if you can trivially optimize it, the browser (probably) can
too
mobile disagrees, a little Chrome 41 (Android 5.1) Firefox 34
(Android 5.1) Safari (iOS 8) ops / second (normalized), bigger is better cache no cache 95%
if you think you’re going to get performance gains from
optimizing for loops you’re gonna have a bad time
dynamic script insertion
<script> var script = document.createElement('script'); script.src = '/app.js'; document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0] .appendChild(script);
</script> vs <script src="/app.js"></script>
None
None
who does this? • analytics: GA, Mixpanel, Chartbeat, Wordpress •
widgets: Disqus, Facebook Comments • JS module loaders: RequireJS, LabJS • script managers: Google Tag Manager, Segment
small problem: CSS Object Model
CSS Object Model (CCSOM) <link type="text/stylesheet" href="/main.css"/> ! ! !
<script> window.getComputedStyle(document.body).margin; </script> can’t execute until CSS ready
CSSOM + dynamic script insertion <link type="text/stylesheet" href="/main.css"/> ! !
! <script> var script = document.createElement('script'); script.src = '/app.js'; document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0] .appendChild(script); </script> can’t execute until CSS ready
dynamic script insertion scripts execute inline scripts can’t execute until
CSSOM ready; downloading is delayed
blocking 2nd script downloads after 1st executes 1st script preloaded
1st script executes
“Have we been doing it all wrong?” - Ilya Grigorik,
2014 bit.ly/rprf-injected
3rd option: async attribute <script async src="/app.js"></script>
ideal: async attribute both scripts execute all 3 resources download
in parallel
we should probably start using async
None
closing thoughts
don’t always believe what you read on the internet
benchmark your own stuff
benchmark your own stuff every year, apparently
always bet on browsers (and JS engines)
thanks
acknowledgements • performance research: Steve Souders, Ilya Grigorik, Guy Podjarny,
Vyacheslav Egorov, Jonathan Klein, Paul Irish, Nicholas Zakas • photos: Christian Junker, André Hofmeister, “My aim is true” • me: Ben Vinegar (@bentlegen) • office hours @ 1:30 PM today