Barry Pollard

@tunetheweb
802 Followers
219 Following
19 Posts

Web Performance Developer Advocate for Google Chrome helping to make the web go faster! All opinions my own.

Mostly on Bluesky (https://bsky.app/profile/tunetheweb.com) I'll be honest, but still respond to pings here!

Twitterhttps://twitter.com/tunetheweb
Websitehttps://www.tunetheweb.com
GitHubhttps://github.com/tunetheweb
Blueskyhttps://bsky.app/profile/tunetheweb.com

The first reviews of my new book on software performance engineering are coming in:

⭐ "A manifesto against enshittification."
⭐ "The most principled engineering book I've read in a long time."
⭐ "The best chapters in this book are worth a whole book."

And it's now 50% off with code “MLOdell” until 26 March: https://hubs.la/Q044cvlc0

#performance #webperf

Performance Engineering in Practice - Den Odell

You can prevent most software performance problems if you recognize their predictable patterns. Performance Engineering in Practice introduces author Den Odell’s Fast by Default model that replaces the slow fix-it-later path with a unique framework to build in performance from the start. Den Odell’s System Paths framework provides a universal diagnostic language for performance that works across any platform or stack to keep your systems fast even as your codebase, team, and user base grow. You’ll work through hands-on examples like slow internal dashboards and cascading problems from a degraded API. Effective profiling tools, shared dashboards, CI budgets, and design reviews all ensure your performance goals are user-centered and your team is aligned and accountable.

Manning Publications

@nhoizey @eeeps A bit more (1024 sites) if you include that other variant mentioned in the bug.

Looks like Interflora.fr and Interflora.it are still using this hack across their sites (but with an external, self-hosted SVG adn we don't store images so more difficult to measure) if anyone knows anyone working there to name and shame them to!

@nhoizey @eeeps I reran the stats. 186 sites out of 15,408,501 are using this hack. Or 0.000012% of the web. That's up from 84 sites 2 years ago, but still not a priority to address IMHO.

If you see sites using it, and know devs working there, then suggest you give them a poke to find out why. A bad plugin they weren't aware of? Or intentional cause they don't understand? Or intentional cause they do understand and just wanna get someone off their back for something they don't care about?

@nhoizey @eeeps Occasionally here when I get tagged in things. but still not loving Mastodon UX 🙂

That sounds like this LCP hack:
https://issues.chromium.org/issues/326876094

The question is how much to spend chasing down these hacks versus spending time on things that are actually useful to people! Personally I'd rather to the latter. There's always gonna be someway to fool a heuristic. And if people wanna trick themselves then who are we to say they're being stupid and blinding themselves for negligible gain 🤷‍♂️

Chromium

Fixing the URL params performance penalty:
https://calendar.perfplanet.com/2025/fixing-the-url-params-performance-penalty/. The one where @tunetheweb is vary 🤦 excited about the `No-Vary-Search` header (and the one where he loses his blogging license).

Web Performance Calendar day 23 with @tunetheweb on configuring caches to ignore non-content-affecting URL params and reclaim performance. No more of this query string = cache miss nonsense.

https://calendar.perfplanet.com/2025/fixing-the-url-params-performance-penalty/

Speculation rules improvements - HTMHell

A collection of bad practices in HTML, copied from real websites.

Speculation rules improvements - HTMHell
@tomayac @pepelsbey I just added a more robust fallback for when the JS isn't supported so it works again on production after a 2 second timeout. But could improve on that by handling this specific scenario better.
Just published a polyfill for `<input type="checkbox" switch>`: https://github.com/tomayac/input-switch-polyfill/. Here's a quick demo: https://tomayac.github.io/input-switch-polyfill/. A little proud of how this conditionally only loads when it's needed. Compare Chrome (above, needs the polyfill) and Safari (below, doesn't need the polyfill).

On day 3 @tunetheweb introduces us to Speculation Rules and recent improvements to the API that help us speed up our websites. #HTMHellAdventCalendar

https://htmhell.dev/adventcalendar/2025/3/

Speculation rules improvements - HTMHell

A collection of bad practices in HTML, copied from real websites.

Speculation rules improvements - HTMHell