Giving Great (Remote) Software Demos
Giving great software demos is both science and art. Here are some tips on making the most out of every demo opportunity, even when you're stuck at home!
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All Blog Posts
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Who Opts-in to Save-data?
A primer on save-data, what it means for your users and what it means for you.
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Measuring Performance behind consent popups
Opting in to cookies can load multiple megabytes of additional content. Here are tips on how to measure web performance both with and without cookie consent.
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When Network is Faster than Cache
We assume that browser caches are near-instantaneous, but data shows that retrieving an object from cache can take hundreds of milliseconds!
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Is it time for a Web Performance rebrand?
Web Performance is a niche term in a broad market, should we widen our appeal to reach more people?
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Collecting SmartThings data in InfluxDB on Raspberry Pi
How to collect data from your Home Automation system into a local timeseries database.
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Collecting SpeedTest results in Influx on Raspberry Pi
How to set up regular SpeedTest reports into a local InfluxDB on a Raspberry Pi
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Reporting Raspberry Pi System Metrics to InfluxDB
How to set up regular system stat reports from a Raspberry Pi into a local InfluxDB
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Installing InfluxDB & Grafana on Raspberry Pi
I recently treated myself to a RaspberryPi 4 Model B to use as a(nother) home server. This is a brief guide on getting InfluxDB and Grafana set up to store and graph timeseries data.
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HTTP Headers for fast & secure static sites
An introduction to key HTTP response headers for speed and security, with implementation guides for Netlify & CloudFlare
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Six Web Performance Technologies to Watch in 2020
Don't bet on 5G and HTTP/3 to make things faster, there are six technologies that I believe will have a bigger impact on web performance in 2020.
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Native image lazy loading has landed in Chrome, maybe don't use it
Native lazy loading for iframes and images landed in Chrome 76, but don't go ripping out your existing lazy loading strategy just yet.
WebPageTest Private - 'no successful results'
A potential quick fix for "The test completed but there were no successful results." in WebPageTest private instances.
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Why Site Speed is Critical for Online Publishers
Site speed is a critical factor in the success of an online publishing business, whether revenue is driven by adverts or subscriptions. This post demonstrates the relationship between speed and publishing revenue, and suggests some quick wins to improve both!
Lead Developer Conference (London) - Day 1!
Lead Developer is a conference for senior and lead software engineers. These are my raw notes from day one.
Delta V Conference - Day 2!
Delta V Conference is a new two-day, single-track web performance conference in London, hosted by me, Perry Dyball and Jo Franchetti. Here's my raw notes from the fantastic content from our lovely speakers on day two.
Delta V Conference - Day 1!
Delta V Conference is a new two-day, single-track web performance conference in London, hosted by me, Perry Dyball and Jo Franchetti. Here's my raw notes from the fantastic content from our lovely speakers on day one.
Twitter Lite isn't as good as the app, and that's okay
Twitter's Progressive Web App is finally out of testing, and it's not as good as the native app. Missing push notifications, wonky images, small text boxes, lack of sharing intents and confusing pull-to-update behaviour all highlight the challenge of building a PWA. The fact that Twitter is on-board with PWAs is a great step towards better web experiences...
Your Analytics Lies to You
You can't rely on your web analytics for performance data and it's understating bounce rate and traffic numbers from old devices.
How to Optimise CSS Image Sprites
Optimising sprites might be more important than you think, and easier than you expect!
Three WebPerf Takeaways from Velocity Europe
Velocity Amsterdam has just come to a close. Here are the three key things that I am taking away from the two days of sessions.
Velocity NY 2016 - Wrap-up
Velocity New York seems like a distant memory now, especially with Velocity Europe around the corner. With that said, I have copious notes from the two day conference which I have summarised here. There were a lot of nuggets of wisdom which I’ll try to organise into a logical order.
Blocking requests in webpagetest? Don't use Chrome.
We know that third-party content can harm the user experience on a website. Measuring that impact can be tricky.
How fast is fast enough?
Do you know when your website’s speed starts to impact your customers’ behaviour?
Getting Reliable Visual Performance Metrics
Tips to get more reliable & consistent visual metrics from WebPageTest
Render Conf 2016
Render Conference - previously known as jQuery UK - was held in Oxford last week. It's a front-end conference for front-end people, which makes me a bit of an outsider. Performance is not the focus of Render Conference. Render is an opportunity for me to hone up my front-end skills and get an idea of what front-end developers are up against and the latest...
Prioritising Site Speed Recommendations
Sometimes prioritising recommendations is more important than making them.
Velocity Europe 2015 - The Good Ones!
This post is a review and summary of the talks at Velocity Europe that I attended. I've summarised each talk and given links to the slides, videos and ratings. A previous post contains the talks that got a five star review from me. Less than a five star review is not a bad thing, though. Five stars means exceptional, while three stars means the talk had s...
Velocity Europe 2015 - My Allstars
This post is a review and summary of the talks at Velocity Europe that got a 5 star review from me. I've summarised each talk and given links to the slides, videos and ratings. A further post contains the talks that didn't quite get a five star review from me.
Measuring Webpage Jank
Webpage jank can harm the user experience, here's an easy way to measure it on your pages
Be Mindful With Modernizr
Modernizr might be making your site slow, especially on mobiles
The Future of Web Performance - Part 1
Web performance is critically important, how will upcoming technologies change the way we manage it?
Questions to Ask Your Third-Parties
We need rules to keep third-party Javascript in check.
Manage Third-party Risk Using a Content Security Policy
A feature to prevent cross-site-scripting may make it easier to police third-party javascript.
Using a Web Performance Heatmap to Assess Page Performance
I've made a Heatmap to visualise when each element loads on a page.
How to Find the Third-Parties on Your Site
Third-party means not you or me, but them.
Web Performance Optimisation Basics
Website performance is critical to user experience. We need rules to make it easier.
