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Performance Analysis with Chrome DevTools

When it comes to performance, developers often use Lighthouse, Perfbuddy, or similar performance analysis tools. But when the target site has protection against bots, getting information is not that simple. In this blog post, we are going to focus on where to look for signs of performance bottlenecks by using Chrome Devtools.

Preparations

Even when access to automated performance analysis tools is restricted, the Network, Performance, and Performance Insights tabs of Chrome Devtools can still be leveraged. To do that, some preparations can be made.

When starting our analysis, I recommend opening the page we want to analyse in incognito mode. So we separate the analysis from our regular browser habits, cookies, and possible browser extensions. When we load the page for the first time, let's make sure we disable caching in the Network tab, so resources are always fetched when we reload.

Location of the "disable cache" checkbox in Chrome Devtools' Network tab

Some pages heavily rely on client-side storage mechanisms such as indexedDB, localStorage, and sessionStorage. Cookies can also interfere. Therefore, it's good to leverage the "Application" tab's Clear site data button to make sure lingering data won't interfere with your results.

Some antivirus software with network traffic filtering can also interfere with your requests. They can block, slow down, or even intercept and modify certain network requests, which can greatly affect loading time and the accuracy of your results. If the site under analysis is safe, we recommend disabling network traffic filtering temporarily.

We strongly suggest just looking at the page and reloading it a few times to get a feeling of its performance. A lot of things cannot be detected by human eyes, but you can look for flickers and content shifts on the page. These performance issues can be good entry points to your investigation.

Common bottlenecks: resources

Let's start at the Network tab, where we can identify if resources are not optimised. After we reload the page, we can use the filters on the network tab to focus on image resources. Then we can see the information of these requests, including the size of the images, the time it took to load each image, and any errors that occurred. The waterfall chart is also useful. This is where you can see the timing of each image resource loading.

We should look for evidence that the image resources are served from a CDN, with proper compression. We can check the resources one by one, and see if they contain Content-Encoding: gzip or Content-Encoding: br headers. If these headers are missing, we found one bottleneck that can be fixed by serving images using gzip or brotli compression while serving them.

Headers on resource requests can tell other signs of errors. It can also happen that images are served from a CDN, such as fastly, but if there are fastly-io-error headers on the resources, it can mean that something is misconfigured.

We also need to check the dimensions of the images. If an image is larger than the space it's being displayed in, it may be unnecessarily slowing down the page. If we find such bottlenecks, we can resize the images to match the actual dimensions of the space where they are being displayed to improve loading time.

Server-side rendering can improve your SEO altogether, but it is worth checking the size of the index.html file because sometimes it can be counterproductive. It is recommended to try and keep HTML files under 100kb to keep the TTFB (Time To First Byte) metric under 1 second.

If the page uses polyfills, it's worth checking what polyfills are in use. IE11 is no longer supported, and loading unnecessary polyfills for that browser slows down the page load time.

Performance Insights Tab

The performance Insights Tab in Chrome DevTools allows users to measure the page load of a website. This is done by running a performance analysis on the website and providing metrics on various aspects of the page load process, such as the time it takes for the page to be displayed, the time it takes for network resources to be loaded, and the time it takes for the page to be interactive.

The performance analysis is run by simulating a user visiting the website and interacting with it, which allows the tool to accurately measure the performance of the page under real-world conditions. This information can then be used to identify areas of the website that may be causing slowdowns and to optimize the performance of the page.

Follow the steps to run an analysis:

  1. Open the Chrome Devtools
  2. Select the "Performance insights" tab
  3. Click on the Measure page load button
A screenshot of the performance insights results of a not performant page

The analysis provides us with a detailed waterfall representation of requests, color coded to the request types. It can help you identify requests that block/slow down the page rendering, and/or expensive function calls that block the main thread. It also provides you with information on important performance metrics, such as DCL (DOM Content Loaded), FCP (First Contentful Paint), LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) and TTI (Time To Interactive). You can also simulate network or CPU throttling, or enable the cache if your use case requires that.

DCL refers to the time it takes for the initial HTML document to be parsed and for the DOM to be constructed. FCP refers to the time it takes for the page to display the first contentful element, such as an image or text. LCP is a metric that measures the loading speed of the largest element on a webpage, such as an image or a block of text. A fast LCP helps ensure that users see the page's main content as soon as possible, which can improve the overall user experience. TTI refers to the time it takes for the page to become fully interactive, meaning that all of the necessary resources have been loaded and the page is responsive to user input.

Performance Tab

The "start profiling and reload page" button in the Performance tab of Chrome DevTools allows users to run a performance analysis on a website and view detailed information about how the page is loading and rendering. By clicking this button, the tool will simulate a user visiting the website and interacting with it, and will then provide metrics and other information about the page load process.

Follow the steps to run an analysis

  1. Open the Chrome Devtools
  2. Select the "Performance" tab
  3. Click on the button with the "refresh" icon
Location of the reload and record button

A very useful part of this view is the detailed information provided on the main thread. We can interact with call stacks and find functions that might run too long, blocking the main thread, and delaying the TTI (Time To Interactive) metric. Selecting a function gives all kinds of information on that function. You can see how long that function was running, and what other functions it called, and you can also directly open that function in the Sources tab.

A screenshot of the main thread of a not performant page (page url redacted)

Identifying long-running, blocking functions is crucial in finding performance bottlenecks. One way to mitigate them is to move them into worker threads.


Chrome DevTools is a powerful tool for analyzing the performance of web applications. By using the network tab, you can identify issues with resources that might slow down page load. With the Performance insights and Performance tabs, we can identify issues that may be causing the website to load slowly, and take steps to optimize the code for better performance. Whether you're a beginner or an experienced developer, Chrome DevTools is an essential tool for analyzing and improving the performance of web applications.

This Dot Labs is a development consultancy that is trusted by top industry companies, including Stripe, Xero, Wikimedia, Docusign, and Twilio. This Dot takes a hands-on approach by providing tailored development strategies to help you approach your most pressing challenges with clarity and confidence. Whether it's bridging the gap between business and technology or modernizing legacy systems, you’ll find a breadth of experience and knowledge you need. Check out how This Dot Labs can empower your tech journey.

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Introduction Node.js has shipped a built-in test runner for a couple of major versions. Since its release I haven’t heard much about it so I decided to try it out on a simple Fastify API server application that I was working on. It turns out, it’s pretty good! It’s also really nice to start testing a node application without dealing with the hassle of installing some additional dependencies and managing more configurations. Since it’s got my stamp of approval, why not write a post about it? In this post, we will hit the highlights of the testing API and write some basic but real-life tests for an API server. This server will be built with Fastify, a plugin-centric API framework. They have some good documentation on testing that should make this pretty easy. We’ll also add a SQL driver for the plugin we will test. Setup Let's set up our simple API server by creating a new project, adding our dependencies, and creating some files. Ensure you’re running node v20 or greater (Test runner is a stable API as of the 20 major releases) Overview `index.js` - node entry that initializes our Fastify app and listens for incoming http requests on port 3001 `app.js` - this file exports a function that creates and returns our Fastify application instance `sql-plugin.js` - a Fastify plugin that sets up and connects to a SQL driver and makes it available on our app instance Application Code A simple first test For our first test we will just test our servers index route. If you recall from the app.js` code above, our index route returns a 501 response for “not implemented”. In this test, we're using the createApp` function to create a new instance of our Fastify app, and then using the `inject` method from the Fastify API to make a request to the `/` route. We import our test utilities directly from the node. Notice we can pass async functions to our test to use async/await. Node’s assert API has been around for a long time, this is what we are using to make our test assertions. To run this test, we can use the following command: By default the Node.js test runner uses the TAP reporter. You can configure it using other reporters or even create your own custom reporters for it to use. Testing our SQL plugin Next, let's take a look at how to test our Fastify Postgres plugin. This one is a bit more involved and gives us an opportunity to use more of the test runner features. In this example, we are using a feature called Subtests. This simply means when nested tests inside of a top-level test. In our top-level test call, we get a test parameter t` that we call methods on in our nested test structure. In this example, we use `t.beforeEach` to create a new Fastify app instance for each test, and call the `test` method to register our nested tests. Along with `beforeEach` the other methods you might expect are also available: `afterEach`, `before`, `after`. Since we don’t want to connect to our Postgres database in our tests, we are using the available Mocking API to mock out the client. This was the API that I was most excited to see included in the Node Test Runner. After the basics, you almost always need to mock some functions, methods, or libraries in your tests. After trying this feature, it works easily and as expected, I was confident that I could get pretty far testing with the new Node.js core API’s. Since my plugin only uses the end method of the Postgres driver, it’s the only method I provide a mock function for. Our second test confirms that it gets called when our Fastify server is shutting down. Additional features A lot of other features that are common in other popular testing frameworks are also available. Test styles and methods Along with our basic test` based tests we used for our Fastify plugins - `test` also includes `skip`, `todo`, and `only` methods. They are for what you would expect based on the names, skipping or only running certain tests, and work-in-progress tests. If you prefer, you also have the option of using the describe` → `it` test syntax. They both come with the same methods as `test` and I think it really comes down to a matter of personal preference. Test coverage This might be the deal breaker for some since this feature is still experimental. As popular as test coverage reporting is, I expect this API to be finalized and become stable in an upcoming version. Since this isn’t something that’s being shipped for the end user though, I say go for it. What’s the worst that could happen really? Other CLI flags —watch` - https://nodejs.org/dist/latest-v20.x/docs/api/cli.html#--watch —test-name-pattern` - https://nodejs.org/dist/latest-v20.x/docs/api/cli.html#--test-name-pattern TypeScript support You can use a loader like you would for a regular node application to execute TypeScript files. Some popular examples are tsx` and `ts-node`. In practice, I found that this currently doesn’t work well since the test runner only looks for JS file types. After digging in I found that they added support to locate your test files via a glob string but it won’t be available until the next major version release. Conclusion The built-in test runner is a lot more comprehensive than I expected it to be. I was able to easily write some real-world tests for my application. If you don’t mind some of the features like coverage reporting being experimental, you can get pretty far without installing any additional dependencies. The biggest deal breaker on many projects at this point, in my opinion, is the lack of straightforward TypeScript support. This is the test command that I ended up with in my application: I’ll be honest, I stole this from a GitHub issue thread and I don’t know exactly how it works (but it does). If TypeScript is a requirement, maybe stick with Jest or Vitest for now 🙂...