Tim Kadlec on the issues surrounding poor web performance and why it\u2019s so important for us to care about making our sites as fast as possible: <\/p>\n
\nPoor performance can, and does, lead to exclusion. This point is extremely well documented by now, but warrants repeating. Sites that use an excess of resources, whether on the network or on the device, don\u2019t just cause slow experiences, but can leave entire groups of people out.<\/p>\n
There is a growing gap between what a high-end device can handle and what a middle to low-end device can handle. When we build sites and applications that include a lot of CPU-bound tasks (hi there JavaScript), at best, those sites and applications become painfully slow on people using those more affordable, more constrained devices. At worst, we ensure that our site will not work for them at all.<\/p>\n
Forget about comparing this year\u2019s device to a device a couple of years old. Exclusion can happen on devices that are brand-new as well. The web\u2019s growth is being pushed forward primarily by low-cost, underpowered Android devices that frequently struggle with today\u2019s web.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
As Tim mentions at the end of that piece though, it\u2019s easy to forget web performance and it\u2019s sometimes hard to make the case for making a website fast. It\u2019s often seen as a nice-to-have instead of as a core feature in and of itself, like semantic markup and accessibility compliance. <\/p>\n
I\u2019m optimistic that the conversation surrounding this topic is improving things though. Having tools like Lighthouse<\/a> built straight into the browser makes things easier and the abundance of testing tools such as Calibre<\/a> gives us insights into exactly what and where issues might be. But we also need to remember that this isn\u2019t solely a technical problem — it\u2019s an ethical one, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tim Kadlec on the issues surrounding poor web performance and why it\u2019s so important for us to care about making our sites as fast as possible: Poor performance can, and does, lead to exclusion. This point is extremely well documented by now, but warrants repeating. Sites that use an excess of resources, whether on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":223806,"featured_media":278635,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"sig_custom_text":"","sig_image_type":"featured-image","sig_custom_image":0,"sig_is_disabled":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"c2c_always_allow_admin_comments":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"The Ethics of Web Performance","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[17],"tags":[592],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/css-tricks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/css-running.png?fit=1200%2C600&ssl=1","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/css-tricks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281197"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/css-tricks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/css-tricks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/css-tricks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/223806"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/css-tricks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281197"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/css-tricks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281197\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":281211,"href":"https:\/\/css-tricks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281197\/revisions\/281211"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/css-tricks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/278635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/css-tricks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/css-tricks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/css-tricks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}