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
Sponsored
·
Your Podcast. Everywhere. Effortlessly.
Share. Educate. Inspire. Entertain. You do you. We'll handle the rest.
→
benvinegar
April 21, 2015
Programming
1.7k
15
Share
Embed
Copy iframe code
Copy JS code
Copy link
Start on current slide
Re-evaluating Front-end Performance Best Practices
Fluent 2015
benvinegar
April 21, 2015
More Decks by benvinegar
See All by benvinegar
Getting the most out of JavaScript errors
benvinegar
1
380
JavaScript Error Reporting (and Why We Can't Have Nice Things)
benvinegar
0
250
FSTO: Re-evaluating Front-end Peformance Best Practices
benvinegar
9
1.1k
Other Decks in Programming
See All in Programming
The NotImplementedError Problem in Ruby
koic
1
930
「なぜそう決めたのか」を残し続ける仕組み ― Notion AI カスタムエージェント × Slack連携による設計判断の自動記録 - NIKKEI Tech Talk #47
niftycorp
PRO
0
230
TSKaigi Night Talks 2026_TypeScriptでサプライチェーンの整合性を型に閉じ込める
geekplus_tech
0
410
AI 輔助遺留系統現代化的經驗分享
jame2408
1
990
コンテキストの使い捨てをやめる — ビジネスルール駆動開発と miko —
ioki
0
230
その問い、本当に正しいですか?AI時代のエンジニアに必要な哲学と認知科学 / ai-philosophy-cognitive-science
minodriven
13
6.3k
Lessons from Spec-Driven Development
simas
PRO
0
220
Javaの型とAI時代に型が大事な理由 / java types and type in AI era
kishida
2
150
スマートグラスで並列バイブコーディング
hyshu
0
260
なぜ型を書くのか? TSKaigi2026で改めて考える #tskaigi_smarthr
kajitack
0
140
ECSアプリログをFireLensでコスト削減しようとしたけど諦めた話 in Fargate×Node.js
akihisaikeda
2
4.2k
AIだと陥りがちなJakarta EE最新技術への移行時の落とし穴と解決策
tnagao7
0
120
Featured
See All Featured
Dominate Local Search Results - an insider guide to GBP, reviews, and Local SEO
greggifford
PRO
0
200
The AI Revolution Will Not Be Monopolized: How open-source beats economies of scale, even for LLMs
inesmontani
PRO
3
3.5k
Abbi's Birthday
coloredviolet
3
8.2k
From Legacy to Launchpad: Building Startup-Ready Communities
dugsong
0
240
The Straight Up "How To Draw Better" Workshop
denniskardys
239
140k
Applied NLP in the Age of Generative AI
inesmontani
PRO
4
2.3k
BBQ
matthewcrist
89
10k
Measuring Dark Social's Impact On Conversion and Attribution
stephenakadiri
2
220
Building a A Zero-Code AI SEO Workflow
portentint
PRO
0
610
Information Architects: The Missing Link in Design Systems
soysaucechin
0
980
SEOcharity - Dark patterns in SEO and UX: How to avoid them and build a more ethical web
sarafernandez
0
210
Bridging the Design Gap: How Collaborative Modelling removes blockers to flow between stakeholders and teams @FastFlow conf
baasie
0
590
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