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metallissimus
Experienced
Topic Author
Posts: 331
Joined: 17 Oct 2019, 06:54

Is it possible to speed up loading?

22 Jan 2021, 05:15

As we all know and appreciate, X3 is blazingly fast once it's loaded. However, google PageSpeed Insights has some suggestions to speed up that first loading process (at least for my site):
Bildschirmfoto 2021-01-22 um 11.11.58.png
Bildschirmfoto 2021-01-22 um 11.11.58.png (109.9 KiB) Viewed 4113 times
Is it possible to implement any of these suggestions? Especially the first one seems to have a lot of potential.
www.danielbollinger.de – corporate photography
hochzeiten.danielbollinger.de – wedding photography
 
marco963
Experienced
Posts: 89
Joined: 14 Oct 2006, 10:22

Re: Is it possible to speed up loading?

22 Jan 2021, 09:14

metallissimus wrote: As we all know and appreciate, X3 is blazingly fast once it's loaded. However, google PageSpeed Insights has some suggestions to speed up that first loading process (at least for my site):
Bildschirmfoto 2021-01-22 um 11.11.58.png
Is it possible to implement any of these suggestions? Especially the first one seems to have a lot of potential.
Do you think 1,03s saving is so important ?
 
metallissimus
Experienced
Topic Author
Posts: 331
Joined: 17 Oct 2019, 06:54

Re: Is it possible to speed up loading?

22 Jan 2021, 09:19

If it was possible to easily cut 1 second off that would reduce the time to first contentful paint by about 30% – that's quite the improvement.
www.danielbollinger.de – corporate photography
hochzeiten.danielbollinger.de – wedding photography
 
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mjau-mjau
X3 Wizard
Posts: 13993
Joined: 30 Sep 2006, 03:37

Re: Is it possible to speed up loading?

23 Jan 2021, 00:30

One second is quite a lot. But there is no way in hell you are saving 1s just because Google "says so". Here is my network inspector, with cache disabled from a 2016 macbook laptop, from Thailand (quite far away from your server). As you can see, your "document" output is the first big load time taking 683ms, whereas the CSS loads at 43ms (which is quite far away from Google's proposed 1080ms):
Image
What do you see in Google inspector?

Of course, these values might fluctuate depending on many factors, but Google "defaults" are way off target. Besides, they base their suggestions as if a site is something like cnn.com or bbc.com ... Those websites need to squeeze every single byte to get to first visible readable text, because they have millions of readers every day, for example sitting on a morning train viewing from mobile. Every millisecond counts, and rightly so. This does not apply in the same way for a portfolio website, and that's why I don't comment on the output it produces.

All I can say, you need to check your website as a HUMAN, preferably on both desktop and mobile. Does it seem slow (compared to the type of content and compared to other websites)? hochzeiten.danielbollinger.de ... X3 has been optimized for speed in real life for humans.

I could go on and on about what Google reports ... How does it know we aren't using the CSS later on in X3? Google doesn't even know that X3 is dynamic website that loads the CSS only once, and does not need to load it again when navigating pages. Thus X3 does load a fair bulk of resources up front, but it's ultimately beneficial. Of course, there is always room for improvement, but in terms of what Google is reporting here, it can't be used for anything meaningful.

Essentially what many load-critical websites are doing right now, is that they place some "critical" CSS at the top of page, necessary for the page to display. This would be news websites etc. Then as the page is displaying, it can load all non-critical CSS. Considering how fast your CSS file will load in the first place, and considering how small percentage of your website's load time this takes, it's not a crucial part. Most importantly is to get page/document output served as fast as possible (as this blocks all other loads, and is often the slowest resource), as well as optimizing your images ... What's the point of saving 30kb on a CSS if you have an image that is 1000kb and can be compressed down to 500kb?

Google pagespeed (and many similar) are very inaccurate and often give an unbalanced view of your website's loading. They consider all websites as if they are news-website, where every ms and byte counts, and correctly so, because the aim is for the visitor to be able to read that first word.
 
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mjau-mjau
X3 Wizard
Posts: 13993
Joined: 30 Sep 2006, 03:37

Re: Is it possible to speed up loading?

23 Jan 2021, 01:45

metallissimus wrote:As we all know and appreciate, X3 is blazingly fast once it's loaded.
It also loads fast, not "only once it's loaded".

Why not take your website, find a few other non-X3 photography websites, then refresh them in browser multiple times side-by-side. Make sure to have browser network inspector open with "disable cache" enabled to make sure browser-cache does not affect the results. How fast does your X3 website appear on screen compared to other websites?
 
metallissimus
Experienced
Topic Author
Posts: 331
Joined: 17 Oct 2019, 06:54

Re: Is it possible to speed up loading?

26 Jan 2021, 04:33

I feel like I might have offended you, that wasn't my intention and I'm sorry if I did anyways.
mjau-mjau wrote: Google pagespeed (and many similar) are very inaccurate and often give an unbalanced view of your website's loading.
I wasn't aware of that. It's an easily accessible tool for users like me and seems to be a good way to get information that you can't get so easily otherwise (e.g. I don't think Firefox on Android even has an inspector).
www.danielbollinger.de – corporate photography
hochzeiten.danielbollinger.de – wedding photography
 
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mjau-mjau
X3 Wizard
Posts: 13993
Joined: 30 Sep 2006, 03:37

Re: Is it possible to speed up loading?

26 Jan 2021, 05:34

metallissimus wrote:I feel like I might have offended you, that wasn't my intention and I'm sorry if I did anyways.
I'm not :) I just don't like how Google pagespeed gives misconceptions about website performance, and then having to explain in depth (done it before!). It's like swimming up-river.
metallissimus wrote:I wasn't aware of that. It's an easily accessible tool for users like me and seems to be a good way to get information that you can't get so easily otherwise (e.g. I don't think Firefox on Android even has an inspector).
Yes. You can also access it from web:
https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/

It's a good tool for developers, especially those making public websites for the masses (eg community, news, government). But it's a tool and nothing more. You can probably find a website that is 100 x slower to load than X3, but will score near perfect.