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Good morning! First of all, this is going to be a bumpy ride.
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So if you have any questions or if I miss something, just raise your hand and ask.
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Let's talk about why our first web page is important. The problem is that the slower the web page, the more people will bounce from it.
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This graph illustrates how that works. You see the first three seconds—that's the page loading time. The first three seconds are the most important. After two seconds, you have a steep drop-off, and if your page takes longer than about ten seconds, most of your users are gone.
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You have to remember that this is not just for good internet connections. This applies to 3G mobile internet as well. You will lose users if your page takes too long to load.
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Why is that? The issue is that humans need some sort of feedback from any kind of graphical user interface.
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Research shows that if something takes 0 to 100 milliseconds, we feel it almost instantly. As the time increases, we tend to feel lost; anything over a second causes us to think differently about the task at hand.
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Thus, we want to keep our web page loading time below one second. That's an ambitious goal, but it's achievable. To give you an idea of why that's so important, consider Google's experiment.
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They slowed down their response time for a specific user group, and you can see the impact on user behavior over a few weeks.
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Despite the slow start, even small drops in speed can lead to behavioral changes in how users engage with search results.
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Regarding mobile users, these statistics are a bit older but have become even more extreme today. Many users are now using their mobile phones as their primary device for internet access.
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You need to cater to these users because they typically have the slowest possible connections. Your goal should be to deliver a page to them within that one-second frame, which is a challenging task.
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It's tough because we have to consider the whole stack we are dealing with, including DNS lookups, TCP connections, and TLS handshakes.
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At the end of the day, if everything goes perfectly, we are left with about 400 milliseconds to deliver the page from the server.
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However, the browser takes about 100 milliseconds to render the page itself. Thus, if we subtract that 100 milliseconds from the 1,000 milliseconds, we are only left with 300 milliseconds for actual page loading.
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To understand the issues, you must know how HTTP downloads work. HTTP operates on top of TCP, which has a three-way handshake.
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The latency caused by this handshake cannot be changed, and it always takes one round-trip from the device to the server.
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TCP starts with a very small amount of data, slowly increasing as it tries to figure out the bandwidth. As a result, it takes a while to ramp up the transfer speed, impacting overall performance.
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Talking about web performance analysis, one of the major tools available is the waterfall chart. This is a graphical representation of how resources are downloaded.
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For instance, this is a screenshot from the homepage of this conference. The red line you can see indicates a missing favicon, signaling a problem that should be addressed.
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Let's dive into a specific connection example using a 3G connection. The browser begins rendering at approximately 3.6 seconds, which is already far away from our one-second goal. The HTML file is the first to download, taking over two seconds on its own.
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Once the browser starts rendering, there’s a noticeable feeling of frustration for the user, especially if the initial load is slow.
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The first render is immensely important because if you're already visiting that page, your browser will have cached many of the elements the next time you load it.
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Getting pages to render within milliseconds is crucial. Here’s an example from my business homepage, which begins rendering at only 500 milliseconds.
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We need to discuss Rails 5.2, as most attendees here are likely familiar with it.
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We will create a minimal webshop. We will set up scaffolding for the category, product, user review, and establish relationships between them.
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For instance, a product belongs to a category and can have many reviews, while a user can create many reviews. The product model will have a method to calculate the number of stars.
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The index page will contain simple HTML and some CSS to enhance readability. The question now is, how long does it take to render this page on my laptop?
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In development mode, the page renders in 497 milliseconds, which is above our limit.
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Even with such a simple page, we find ourselves well over our desired speed budget.
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Therefore, the first step is to activate caching, which is typically disabled in development mode.
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We will implement a fragment cache for individual rows.
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To ensure up-to-date content, we need to add 'touch true' to the reviews.
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This way, when a new review is added, the product will be updated accordingly, preventing old cached data from being shown.
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In the end, we find ourselves significantly above our goal, but still within a reasonable range, approximately 79 milliseconds.
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With a robust caching strategy, we could implement a Russian doll caching strategy, caching entire tables as well.
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While the improvement gained might not be as substantial as the initial change, it's still an upgrade. We should continuously invest time in improving our caching strategy.
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That said, we should also focus on optimizing database queries, as calculating values dynamically can be wasteful.
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In most cases, you can store certain values in the database itself to save processing time later on, which is a better use of resources.
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So, it’s critical to consider what calculations need to happen at request time and which ones we can cache.
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When you implement caching, understand that it will always be slower the first time it’s accessed.
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The system must check if a fragment is cached; if it's not, it will render the view and utilize resources.
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The cache keys should be simple to compute so as not to add unnecessary delays to your application.
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An overly complicated cache key can take longer to compute than rendering the view itself.
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Next, let's discuss HTTP caching, which can drastically improve performance since browsers aim to minimize downloading.
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Optimizing with last modified and ETags can reduce unnecessary resource retrieval.
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The server acknowledgment of cached resources, when still good, saves time,
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As a consequence, browsers save time fetching while servers save time rendering.
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Preemptively generating caches during off-peak hours can provide great benefits and enhance performance.
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Next up is the handling of files through nginx, where we cache frequently accessed static files to decrease request time.
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Utilizing pre-compression on files enhances the speed further, resulting in dynamic and efficient page loading.
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Web performance targets and practices, such as cookie processing and cache invalidation, must ensure files are current and cleaned regularly.
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These cache mechanisms also apply to logged-in users, provided appropriate planning is taken.
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In a scenario where user 10 million unique web pages are delivered, turn fine-tuning into a more significant efficiency strategy.
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If the storage size is substantial, the implementation becomes far less daunting with cost-effective storage options.
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Moving ahead, it’s equally worthy to devise the necessary settings to delete outdated files, ensuring a smooth operation.
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Managing page expiration techniques ensures users are served the newest content while maintaining optimal performance.
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Server infrastructures must consider edge cases, inviting intentional analysis instead of potential pitfalls, to optimize performance.
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Utilizing Content Delivery Networks can further assist in managing bandwidth consumption, especially for applications experiencing heavy traffic.
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Having done well with test performance implementations, it’s important to continually revisit methods and incorporate improvements.
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Adopting alternative compression standards also saves time, boosting performance and optimizing user experience.
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For any website or application needing growth, analyzing all performance components while yielding clarity and foresight will be vital.
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Ultimately, performance optimization discussions shouldn't overlook programming languages as well as frameworks when building applications.
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The importance of managing your development environments enhances launch performance while ensuring bug-free deployments.
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In closing, always keep your focus on adjusting and finetuning your strategies for long-term efficiency and superior user experience.
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Any questions?
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Thank you! It's always a pleasure to discuss performance with you all.
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And remember to keep the conversation ongoing on social media!
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Feel free to follow my Twitter to stay updated on web performance topics.
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Thank you all once again, and I hope you continue exploring these principles in your projects.
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Thank you and have a great day!
