Layers and Compositing
Posted: August 25, 2024
Web developers typically aren't exposed to low-level browser rendering primitives, yet the concepts of Layers and Compositing are…
Browser Internals
Iframes and Process Allocation
Posted: July 3, 2023
A common question I've encountered when consulting with teams that utilize <iframe> in their web application architecture is: Does an…
Eliminating Choppy Animations by Leveraging the Browser Compositor Thread
Posted: April 30, 2023
Many web applications utilize animations to achieve a variety of visual effects. For example, a web application may surface an animated…
Layout Thrashing and Forced Reflows
Posted: December 11, 2022
The browser's style and layout process (also known as reflow ) is responsible for assigning visual styles and geometry to elements of a…
Why Your Cached JavaScript Is Still Slow and Incurs Performance Overhead
Posted: July 3, 2022
Web Developers often fixate on optimizing the delivery of assets to the end-user's device, and overlook the computation that takes place…
Eliminating Choppy Scrolling in OneDrive Web with a One-Line Change
Posted: May 22, 2022
I use Office 365 for my personal productivity tool of choice and often use the OneDrive web UX to manage my personal files and photos…
An Introduction to the Browser Rendering Pipeline
Posted: February 21, 2022
Users love pixels (frames) delivered on screen as fast as possible; that's what makes a web application feel fast ! HTML and CSS are the…
Multi-process on the Web: The Browser Process Model
Posted: January 30, 2022
While Web Applications are granted a single thread, the Main Thread , to run most of their application and UI logic, Web Browsers are…
Long Tasks: What they are and why you should avoid them
Posted: November 9, 2021
All web applications are granted a single thread, the Main Thread, which is responsible for: Handling user input events, like clicks and…
Detecting when the Browser Paints Frames in JavaScript
Posted: October 12, 2021
Do your performance measurements capture when the browser renders pixels to your user? Most likely, not! In my experience, most developers…
Event Loop Fundamentals
Posted: September 26, 2021
The Browser Event Loop is probably the most important frontend performance concept to grasp. Its behavior dictates how web applications…