Request mapping

The Request Map Generator is a terrific tool. It’s made by Simon Hearne and uses the WebPageTest API.

You pop in a URL, it fetches the page and maps out all the subsequent requests in a nifty interactive diagram of circles, showing how many requests third-party scripts are themselves generating. I’ve found it to be a very effective way of showing the impact of third-party scripts to people who aren’t interested in looking at waterfall diagrams.

I was wondering… Wouldn’t it be great if this were built into browsers?

We already have a “Network” tab in our developer tools. The purpose of this tab is to show requests coming in. The browser already has all the information it needs to make a diagram of requests in the same that the request map generator does.

In Firefox, there’s a little clock icon in the bottom left corner of the “Network” tab. Clicking that shows a pie-chart view of requests. That’s useful, but I’d love it if there were the option to also see the connected circles that the request map generator shows.

Just a thought.

NoLoJS: Reducing the JS Workload with HTML and CSS - Web Performance Calendar

You might not need (much) JavaScript for these common interface patterns.

While we all love the power and flexibility JS provides, we should also respect it, and our users, by limiting its use to only what it needs to do.

Yes! Client-side JavaScript should do what only client-side JavaScript can do.

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So instead of asking yourself, “How can I write code that does what I want?” Consider asking yourself, “Can I write code that ties together things the browser already does to accomplish what I want (or close enough to it)?”

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Grrr… it turns out that browsers exhibit some very frustrating behaviour when it comes to the video element. Rob has the details…

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When I set about writing this article, I intended it to be a strong argument for progressive rendering. But after digging into it, my feelings are less certain.

It’s time for modern CSS to kill the SPA - Jono Alderson

SPAs were a clever solution to a temporary limitation. But that limitation no longer exists.

Use modern server rendering. Use actual pages. Animate with CSS. Preload with intent. Ship less JavaScript.