Todd H. Gardner articles - 55 total
Why Your Perfect Lighthouse Score Doesn't Mean Your Site is Fast
50% of perfect Lighthouse scores still fail real users. Learn why synthetic testing misses critical performance issues and how Real User Monitoring reveals the truth.
HTTP Caching Deep Dive: Performance Optimization Patterns Every Developer Should Know
Discover how to leverage HTTP caching headers to dramatically improve web performance without writing a single line of JavaScript. Learn practical caching strategies, common pitfalls to avoid, and how to implement resource-specific caching patterns that can cut load times by up to 67%.
GTMetrix Alternatives: Better Ways to Measure Web Performance
For years, GTMetrix was a go-to tool for checking website speed. But here’s the thing—paying for...
How to Optimize Website Images for Faster Load Times
Optimize your website images for faster load times, better SEO, and improved user experience with smart compression, lazy-loading, responsive formats, and CDN hosting.
Understanding “Failed to Fetch” JavaScript Errors and How to Fix Them
If you’re building modern web applications, you’ve probably encountered the dreaded “Failed to Fetch” error at some point. This common JavaScript error happens when your web app can’t connect to a server or resource, leading to frustrating moments for both users and developers.
How to Fix Long Animation Frames (LoAFs) and Speed Up Your Website
LoAFs happen when the browser takes too long to process an animation frame, leading to visual stuttering, delayed interactions, or a general feeling of “jankiness.”
What is a 'Rage Click'?
You know that thing where you are so angry at a broken website that you furiously click that button...
Our Super Friendly AI Sloth that Analyzes Your Observability Data
Seems like everyone is building a ChatGPT thing right now, doesn’t it? Well we are too! Inspired by...
Expanding Our Vision: Unifying Client-Side Observability Data
We built an incredible platform that distilled complex data down into simple reports and recommendations. Lots of teams around the world found valuable insights in Request Metrics that they couldn’t get anywhere else.
Explaining Performance to Non-Technical Stakeholders
Whether you’re an e-commerce company, a SaaS provider, or a content publisher, understanding the...
Audit Google Ad Performance With Lighthouse
Implementing Google Ads can be complicated. If done incorrectly, it negatively impacts your website’s performance. Fortunately, there is a new Google Light...
How To Read Flame Charts and Percentiles
Charting can be complicated and intimidating, especially when dealing with web performance data,...
Google Ads Are Slowing You Down
Google has a well earned reputation for speed. At least on their own sites. It’s an entirely...
See Current Core Web Vitals with Chrome
Google is using Core Web Vitals as a factor in search results rankings. They’ve also found that...
Optimizing Static HTML And Images With Webpack
Webpack is great for building Javascript applications, but did you know it can optimize static HTML...
Optimizing Images for Web Performance with NGINX
Images are a constant source of pain when developing websites. There are many formats and resolutions...
Fast Inline Images With React and Webpack
Webpack is great for building React applications, but did you know it can help you optimize app...
5 Tips To Make Google Fonts Faster
Google Fonts is a fantastic tool for web designers and developers, but it is sometimes one of the...
Using Brotli Compression in NGINX
Brotli is gaining steam as the compression algorithm du jour for high performance websites. Created...
HTTP/3 is Fast
HTTP/3 is here, and it’s a big deal for web performance. See just how much faster it makes...
Using HTTP Caching: 2022 Guide
The fastest website is the website that is already loaded, and that’s exactly what we can do with...
Synthetic Testing and Real User Monitoring
Synthetic Testing and Real User Monitoring are the most important tools in your performance toolbox....
Advertising's Performance Tradeoffs
Advertising is everywhere on the web and users have noticed. More than 40% of internet users block...
High Performance Images: 2022 Guide
Images engage users, drive clicks, and generally make everything better--except performance. Images...
Fix Your First Contentful Paint: Cheat Sheet
Are slow FCP scores getting you down? Worried that website performance is frustrating your users and...
Using First Contentful Paint - FCP
First Contentful Paint, or FCP, measures the time take to render the first element of a webpage. It’s...
Common Web Performance Tools
This is an excerpt from Chapter 4 of The Definitive Guide to Measuring Web Performance. Now...
Kinds of Web Performance Data
This is an excerpt from Chapter 3 of The Definitive Guide to Measuring Web Performance. There...
Web Performance Metrics
This is an excerpt from Chapter 2 of The Definitive Guide to Measuring Web Performance. Now...
Web Performance Fundamentals
This is an excerpt from Chapter 1 of The Definitive Guide to Measuring Web Performance. In this...