Ben Schwarz

15 Sept

Qatar Airways was voted the world’s best airline in 2025. Its booking site ranks 79th out of 111. Cathay Pacific, five stars, ranks dead last. I spent a while digging into why airline websites are so slow, and what the fast ones (Ryanair, Frontier) do differently. calibreapp.com/blog/airline...

If only bananas had some sort of protective skin

In Japan for a ten day cycling trip — did I miss anything?

It would be remiss to mention that I had to roll some creds this morning after breakfast. Still, I got to ride 70kms and eat some very good meals

groups.google.comIntent to Ship: Long Animation Frames style and layout duration

Ben Schwarz reposted

Yoav Weiss

@yoav.ws

If you ever struggled with understanding if your CSS performance issues are coming from style calculation or from layout, LoAF's styleDuration and layoutDuration is shipping in Chromium 158 to help with that groups.google.com/a/chromium.o...

chromestatus.comChrome Platform Status

TIL: Persistent widgets (like audio payers) could soon be enabled for hard navigations on the web with <persistentwidget> Users could freely navigate between pages, without skipping a beat 🎶

Barry Pollard@tunetheweb.com

For the first, keep an eye on this: - chromestatus.com/feature/5155... - github.com/WICG/persist... - groups.google.com/a/chromium.o...

The pitch for single page apps was always “it’s faster after the first load”. Google’s Core Web Vitals, used in search ranking, now measure soft navigations. It’s true: LCP drops by about a third. But, I don't think SPAs are ever really worth all the compromises and extra code.

Edit: It was a bit unclear - Soft navigations won't be counted until 2027. They're just being measured at the moment.

Curious claim being parroted for 24 hrs. I think it's inaccurate. Cloudflare bot detection isn't "social media bots", it's web spiders and other automated traffic: Yandex's core business. Is there any substantive proof of less right wing deceit/propaganda on social media?

StrictlyChristo 🇺🇦🌻@strictlychristo.bsky.social

Zelensky: "When our strikes reached Yandex’s data centers, it suddenly became a little easier to breathe on many social media platforms. A lot of people noticed it. There was less hate, less division, and fewer provocations. Because there were fewer bots. It’s pretty clear where those bots were."

Ben Schwarz reposted

Stefan Judis

@stefanjudis.com

There is a chance that a new Web Weekly will drop tmrw morning. Just saying, if you want to catch the next issue. 🫣

Stefan Judis@stefanjudis.com

After a short break, the new Web Weekly is about to hit all inboxes. 🫣 This time, it includes `text-box` going Baseline, the two phases of `fetch`, linked parameters in SVG, and the new `Connection-Allowlist` header. Enjoy! webweekly.email/archive/web-...

Once went to a bar after a conference day, Gruber was there, we talked a bit — then he left, leaving us to pickup his bar tab. Tells you more than you need to know. Shit guy

Ooohh this is interesting — a style sheet language for 3D scenes. Going to take this for a spin 🔜

LukyVj - A$AP Luky@lukyvj.bsky.social

If you can write CSS, you can write GSS { ● } I've been dreaming of this for years: a language to build 3D scenes like you write CSS. Selectors, cascade, :hover, keyframes… compiled to one GPU shader. Meet GSS: GPU Style Sheets. gss-lang.dev #shader #glsl #gss

medium.comNode.js at scale, rebalanced: how we cut cost by 38%By optimizing our biggest Node.js service, we cut our compute costs by 38%

booking.com cut their SSR costs by 38%. What stood out to me? they’re effectively shipping their org chart. One app per page (home, search, property). Teams own the components (header, footer, reviews), loaded at runtime. Conway’s law, shipped to production.

github.blogImproving site performance by shipping more CSSHow we fully migrated github.com away from CSS-in-JS.

GitHub just finished ripping styled-components out of github.com. Result: 55% less time to server-render a page, 25% faster component init. CSS-in-JS makes you pay for styles twice: collecting them on the server, running JS on the client. Static CSS is *always* more efficient. Ship CSS.

GitHub@github.com

GitHub.com has fully moved off CSS-in-JS to CSS Modules, resulting in 55% less server-side render time and 25% faster component init. https://github.blog/engineering/architecture-optimization/improving-site-performance-by-shipping-more-css/

theguardian.comOpenAI’s Medicare attack has exposed Australia’s ‘tech debt’. Fixing it could bring a big bill for taxpayersHome affairs department orders all federal government agencies to conduct review of ‘legacy technology’ amid fallout from AI agent hacks * Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast The Australian government faces significant “tech debt” that could bring a big bill for taxpayers after the OpenAI Medicare breach, as government agencies will need to fortify their defences against future attacks by AI agents. This week, the home affairs department ordered all federal government agencies to conduct a “legacy technology stocktake” that requires a plan for each agency to “reduce legacy technology systems” to a level within the agency’s risk tolerance and appetite, the direction stated. Continue reading...

Maybe we should stop awarding those goons from Accenture or Deloitte tenders for projects, or, like, actually dip into the highly functioning tech sector Australia has. The issue lies in our ineffective government, which lacks basic competence regarding technology.

Guardian Australia@australia.theguardian.com

OpenAI’s Medicare attack has exposed Australia’s ‘tech debt’. Fixing it could bring a big bill for taxpayers

Google started publishing ad metrics for websites, so naturally I went looking for the worst offender 🤓 The “award” goes to Italian news La Repubblica — where ads cover 96% (!!) of desktop viewports. (Experimental CrUX data.) Compare it yourself: calibreapp.com/tools/compar...

shoptalkshow.com734: Web Performance with Ben SchwarzBen Schwarz stops by to discuss the state of web performance, using his research on airline websites as a case study.

Here’s what it looks like when you disable ad tracking 🫣

Ben Schwarz reposted

Chris Coyier

@chriscoyier.net

Come for the webperf, stay for Ben's smooth intelligent voice

Ben Schwarz@benschwarz.bsky.social

13 years after my first ShopTalk Show (episode 68!), Chris and Dave had me back to talk web performance: why airline websites are so slow, RUM vs synthetic testing, and whether fixing speed actually makes money ✈️🐢 shoptalkshow.com/734/

shoptalkshow.com734: Web Performance with Ben SchwarzBen Schwarz stops by to discuss the state of web performance, using his research on airline websites as a case study.

@shoptalkshow.com forgive me for not mentioning 🙄 Thanks for having me @chriscoyier.net @davatron5000.bsky.social, great to talk shop with y’all

calibreapp.comLazy Loading Images and Media: How Far Ahead Browsers FetchHow far ahead Chrome, Firefox and Safari fetch lazy media, why a lazy hero image slows your page, and where to use lazy, eager and fetchpriority.

New as of Chrome 150: loading="lazy" on <video> and <audio>. A lazy video holds back its file, poster and autoplay until it's close. Firefox and Safari don't support it yet, so media there still loads straight away.

How far ahead browsers fetch lazy images: • Chrome: 1,250px on 4G, 2,500px on 3G, 6,000px (!!) on 2G • Firefox: 600px, on any connection • Safari: one viewport. Lazy iframes: 0px, they wait until on screen

I rewrote our lazy loading guide with new usage data. Most pages still don’t use it. Chrome page loads using loading="lazy" (Sept 2026): • <img>: 26% • <iframe>: 1.5% • <video>: 0.06% • <audio>: 0.000039%

⚠️ PSA for React 19 SSR apps: React automatically preloads ALL server rendered images. Without hints, early bandwidth is needlessly wasted. Fix it: * LCP image → fetchPriority="high" * Never lazy load the LCP image * Below-the-fold images → loading="lazy" (this also stops React preloading them)

I don't like to "go-in" on web frameworks because it's unproductive. BUT Unfortunately, this preload situation is just yet another example of React’s failed abstractions that make pages slower — unless you fix it. It's busy work created by the framework. React-apps are full of these concessions.

Credit where it's due. Frontier tops the airline benchmark, and has trimmed LCP from 3.29s to 2.60s over 9 months. Small, steady wins. Ryanair has been quietly shipping perf improvements since I wrote about their redesign in 2015. A decade of discipline.

calibreapp.comIt’s official: Airline websites are slow, but they don’t have to be | CalibreWe analysed 111 airline websites and it confirmed what travellers have been feeling for years

Hainan Airlines also deserves a mention: the only Skytrax top-10 carrier whose site ranks in the performance top 10. Shout-outs and what they're doing right: calibreapp.com/blog/airline...

Australian government vulnerability disclosure car crash. We should 100% adopt GDPR, and other very common security practices Instead, they’ve left our asses swinging in the breeze, as usual 🤦‍♂️

bystander1.bsky.social@bystander1.bsky.social

Time line

Why are airline websites so slow? After looking at 111 of them, it comes down to four things. A thread 🧵

View full thread

3. Custom UI from another era. Hand-rolled dropdowns, modals and expanders doing what <details>, <dialog> and popover now do natively, with smooth animation for free. 4. Not enough caching. HTML should be cached or served in under 500ms. One click shouldn't fire dozens of booking engine requests.

calibreapp.comIt’s official: Airline websites are slow, but they don’t have to be | CalibreWe analysed 111 airline websites and it confirmed what travellers have been feeling for years

The sites that pass (Frontier, Ryanair) aren't doing anything magic. They measure, find the worst page or interaction, fix it, repeat. Full breakdown: calibreapp.com/blog/airline...

Why are airline websites so slow? After looking at 111 of them, it comes down to four things. A thread 🧵

1. Blocking interactions. Every click (date, seat, fare) waits on a server round-trip before the page paints. Those requests should be async. They aren’t. 2. Skeleton loaders that shift the layout. Click → lockup → skeleton → jump → content. That’s INP, CLS and LCP failing in sequence.

Caught up with my favorite web duo to talk performance and user-experience. Episode dropping soon 🤠 @shoptalkshow.com

Ben Schwarz reposted

Matt Hodges

@matthodges.bsky.social

19 Sept

Very quick and dirty Jev test for hiring bias. One resume for a Wall Street job; asked whether the applicant should get a first-round interview. 76 evaluations, changing only the first name. 19 of each: White-associated men/women, Black-associated men/women. console.typesafe.ai/playground?s...

Matt Hodges@matthodges.bsky.social

Somehow Jev has not yet triggered much discussion of cheap, low-latency, general-purpose classification as infrastructure for targeted oppression.

goo.gleFresher features, faster fixes: The two-week release cycle is here | Blog | Chrome for DevelopersWith Chrome 153, we're launching a faster, two-week release cycle.

22 Sept

Great to reduce the TTL for new web platform features. I'd love to see other browsers roll to a more regular cadence too.

Chrome for Developers@developer.chrome.com

We launched our new two-week release cycle → goo.gle/4hsULH0 Here's what this means for web devs: * Smaller, more manageable release scopes * Modern Web Platform capabilities land sooner * Speedier delivery for critical security patches

21 Sept

Cathay Pacific: HK$72.5B in passenger revenue, and the slowest booking site of any major airline. Shopify’s data says a 1 second LCP improvement is worth ~30% in conversions. Airlines aren’t shops, but even a fraction of that is a very large number. calibreapp.com/blog/airline-websites-are-slow

roe.devDon't be niceSometimes, it's more important to be good than it is to be nice.

20 Sept

Safe spaces stay safe by removing those who cause harm, even if they “only” weaponise psychological safety in bad faith. You don't have to be polite about it. Don’t be nice.

daniel r(ooooooh) in nyc 🇺🇸@danielroe.dev

don't be nice.

18 Sept

Everyone is rightfully happy to call out Ed Sheeran for bowing to pressure, but no one seems to be acknowledging that one of the world’s best known music artists felt compelled to bend over for fascists, and showed that he too can be controlled. That's where we're at right now.

Everyone’s explanation for slow airline sites: “it’s the booking engine.” Ryanair and Cathay Pacific both run on Amadeus. Ryanair is one of the fastest of the 111 sites I measured. Cathay is the slowest, by a wide margin. It isn’t the vendor. It's what you build on top of it.

calibreapp.comIt’s official: Airline websites are slow, but they don’t have to be | CalibreWe analysed 111 airline websites and it confirmed what travellers have been feeling for years

Amadeus, Sabre, in-house and TravelSky all have fast and slow airlines. The full vendor breakdown, with TTFB per site: calibreapp.com/blog/airline...

calibreapp.comnikkei.com and 4 more: Advertising Comparison | CalibreCompare ad metrics (ad density, ad count, and CPU and network usage by ads) for nikkei.com, cnn.com, huffpost.com, bbc.com, straitstimes.com. Real Chrome user data from the last 28 days.

How much of a news site is just ads? 🪶 nikkei.com – almost none 🐘 huffpost.com – 11 MB @calibre compare tool can now rank sites by Ad data. Ran it on 5 global news sites 👇 calibreapp.com/tools/compar...

Ben Schwarz reposted

Jhey ʕ·ᴥ·　ʔ

@jhey.dev

one does not simply reveal a password 👁️

developer.chrome.comNew ad metrics in Chrome User Experience Report | Blog | Chrome for DevelopersLearn about the new ad metrics now available in the Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX)

16 Sept

Google started shipping ad metrics in CrUX overnight, so I’ve added them to Calibre's free Core Web Vitals tool. First look at the Independent: ads take up 20% of the screen, 7.25s of CPU and 5.1MB of data per page. 88% of their readers are on phones. calibreapp.com/tools/core-w...

Ben Schwarz reposted

Barry Pollard

@tunetheweb.com

15 Sept

We just launched experimental ad metrics in the Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX): - Ad Count - Ad Density - Ad Weight: Network - Ad Weight: CPU These metrics are a set of ad-related measurements that provide transparency into sites' ad experiences. developer.chrome.com/blog/crux-ad... 1/8 🧵

Ben Schwarz reposted

Lea Verou, PhD

@lea.verou.me

15 Sept

Whoa, folks… I knew there was a need, but this is unprecedented! In only 15h after I posted it, gamut mapping shot up to be the 4th most upvoted interop proposal¹! 🎉 It's also the #1 trending, but that's kind of expected given the fact above 😂 ¹ As of right now, note this is still very fluid

Lea Verou, PhD@lea.verou.me

🎨 Ever wondered why oklch() is so odd? Why adjusting L doesn't produce good color ramps? And why TF is L=100% not white?! I just wrote a thorough explanation of why this happens¹: github.com/web-platform... 👍 Upvote if you want this fixed in browsers in 2027! ¹ Spoiler: it’s lack of gamut mapping

calibreapp.comWebsite Speed Leaderboard - Top Sites Ranked by Core Web VitalsWorld’s top websites ranked by Core Web Vitals performance. See industry benchmarks and performance leaders.

10 Sept

As you can see, I'm a completely normal person trying to write a blog post

Ben Schwarz reposted

Calibre

@calibreapp.com

9 Sept

🏆 Website speed industry benchmarks, now with fresh CrUX data for August calibreapp.com/tools/websit...

Ben Schwarz reposted

Judd Legum

@juddlegum.bsky.social

8 Sept

1. Elon Musk is spending millions pushing Americans to VoteSafe, which bills itself as a voter registration site but is actually a digital surveillance machine.