WebExpo 2023: Talks on Speed Optimization

This year's WebExpo is behind us. It was delightful. It was intense.

I'm one of those who revel in the interdisciplinary crossovers at this web-focused conference. Yet, when there’s a session on speed, you'll find me firmly in the front row.

WebExpo is already releasing recordings, so you can watch some talks that touched on speed and enhance your optimization skills.

Harry Roberts: Optimising Largest Contentful Paint#

When Harry's in town, you go to see Harry. It's a rule. The former CSS expert, known as CSS Wizardry, has now immersed himself in performance. His talks are always meticulously detailed and delve deeply into specific topics.

If you're unfamiliar with the LCP metric, do watch this. And know that you probably don't understand Largest Contentful Paint as well as you think. LCP, among all Web Vitals, meets recommended limits on the fewest websites. Even I learned something new from Harry's talk, like the significance of the decoding attribute on images that are LCP elements.

Scott Jehl: Experimenting with performance at the edge#

The first part of this talk will appeal to those still not convinced that web speed is worth addressing. Expect a wealth of useful numbers, graphs, and arguments that might finally persuade your boss or client that speed matters.

After a long introduction, Scott showcased Experiments in WebpageTest, which allow you to test the impact of code changes on speed directly on a live site. It's quite fascinating and definitely worth a try.

Martin Michálek: Shift happens: Dealing with Cumulative Layout Shift (Case Study)#

I must also invite you to watch the recording of my own talk, which is always a bit awkward for me. In twenty minutes, I tried to demonstrate the detailed knowledge necessary for optimizing the new and less explored CLS metric.

I illustrated it with a case study of work for our dear client – Goldea.cz. Some optimizations we manage quite easily, but here we found ourselves challenged, learning new and surprising things about Cumulative Layout Shift.

Do you know what tools to use for measuring CLS and why not to do it with Lighthouse? Do you know what effect flexbox in navigation and a scrollbar on Windows have on CLS? My talk will answer these questions.

I was pleasantly surprised by two other talks that touched on web speed:

• Ondřej Čermák: How to make sure your system doesn’t blow (up) - scaling for performance doesn't always help. The key is to measure well. Indeed! And one more thing – watch out for queues.

• Server-Side: The newest website tracking concept: Pavel Šabatka - well-presented arguments on why to consider server-side GTM, how to roughly implement it, and what it costs. It's simpler than I thought and can quite significantly help with speed.

It was splendid. See you at WebExpo 2024!

But first, we'll meet at Reshoper 2023, on 17th May 2023.

Tags:PageSpeed.ONEWeb Performance