3rd Party Footprint @ Webrebels

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3rd Party FootprintEVALUATING THE PERFORMANCE OF EXTERNAL SCRIPTS

BARBARA BERMES /bbinto

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I live in Toronto, Canada

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I love burritos

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I’m passionate about web perf

#webrebelsLet’s get this 3rd party started!

#LDNWebPerf#webrebels

In the strictest sense, anything served to the client that’s provided by an

organization that’s not the website provider is considered to be third-party

“”–Ben Vinegar, Author of “Third-Party Script”

What is a 3rd party script?


Types of 3rd party scriptsAdvertising Tracking and Analytics Fonts Social Media Libraries and Frameworks

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What’s the #1 used 3rd Party script?


Stats from Big Query

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AKAMAI (FB)14%

TWITTER 5%

FACEBOOK 10%

GOOGLE 71%

Top 10

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Visualize the impact of 3rd party scripts

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Foreign content overload


Example: Wired• Body Level One

• Body Level Two

• Body Level Three

• Body Level Four

• Body Level Five

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But what’s the issue?


The Issues and Negative Impacts

PerformanceFront-end Single Point of Failure (SPOF) Privacy


Potential SolutionsSafe SnippetsCaching and Hosted LibrariesTools and Initiatives

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Performance

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- John HjelmstadGoogle I/O 2012 (How we Make JavaScript Widgets Scream)

The value you get out of the widget needs to be greater than the performance hit you are taking

Rule of Thumb

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A user who has to endure an 8-second download delay spends only 1% of their total viewing time looking at the featured promotional space on a landing page.

In contrast, a user who receives instantaneous page rendering spends 20% of viewing time within the promotional area (source: Jakob Nielsen)

“

”

Perception of promotional space

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A website without ads?


The performance impact of ads

• Body Level One

• Body Level Two

• Body Level Three

• Body Level Four

• Body Level Five

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40%Using no (client-side) ad code reduced CBC’s page load time by 40%

<script/>

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Monitor foreign content, constantly!


Arith

met

ic M

ean

in s

0

2.5

5

7.5

10

10/4/12 10/31/12

Bad 3rd parties (CBC mobile Site)

Smooth sailing

Client-side Ads

Ads turned offServer-side Ads

Source: Keynote Daily Reports

We noticed a spike

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Single point of failure


A single point of failure (SPOF) is a part of a system that, if it fails, will stop the entire system from working

–Wikipedia

SPOF


The Offender

It will block rendering anything after this line

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Yeah…whatever3rd providers don’t really go down…

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Oh yes, they do!

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Title TextTitle Text

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The Great Firewall of China

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Simulating SPOF on TechCrunch

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#velocityconf

SPOF-O-Matic

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SPOF WIRED

Without SPOFWith SPOF: Visually complete 40s

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Let’s crash this party

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Title TextTitle Text

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#velocityconf#webrebels

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Initializing client-side scripts

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Safest (previous) way: Dynamic script tag

(to cover most of the browsers)

#webrebelshttp://www.phpied.com/social-button-bffs/

Asynchronous Loading

http://www.phpied.com/social-button-bffs/

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Title Text

Asynchronous Loading

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Before

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5 seconds 25 seconds

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After

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AFTER5 seconds

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The Future


Async or Defer JS


Async and Defer JS


Protect yourself with the help of tools

Ad-hoc browser toolsContinuous integration and deployment tools

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Caching?Don’t always rely on it!


30min

3 min

Cache Policies

20 min

30 min

1 hr

20 min

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What about hosted libraries?


Pages using Google CDN(Top Alexa Websites)

0%

0.25%

0.5%

Jan '11 Jan '13 Jan '13 Jan '14 Jan '15

11%

17%

26%

37%

47%

Perc

enta

geGoogle Hosted Libraries

PAGES USING GOOGLE LIBRARIES API

52% 48%


Anywhere?

Don’t just copy and paste

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SPOF Alert!

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Don’t do this….

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Rather do this: Silent Fail

#webrebelsSource: May 2015, Big Query result on jQuery from Google CDNs

Google’s hostest jQuery fragmentation

OTHER 30%

1.4.2 5%1.11.0

6%1.8.2 6%

1.11.1 7%

1.9.1 8%

1.8.3 8%

1.10.2 8%

1.7.1 10%

1.7.2 12%

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So, whats the verdict:Hosted Libraries or not?

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Privacy

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Title Texthttps://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/like-button/

https://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/like-button/

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Title TextWhat they don’t really tell you that they maybe….track the visited website, your IP, and more….????Did you agree to that?

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Open Source Initiatives and Resources

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Privacy Hero heise’s Opt-in Solution

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#velocityconf


Measuring 3rd party content on your site

Navigation Timing APIResource Timing API

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0

120

240

Jan '14 Feb '14 Mar '14 Apr '14 May '14 Jun '14 Jul '14 May '15

82 86 8699

130

157168

232

Fastly Optimizely

Instagram Cedexis Twitter TypeKit

CDNPlanet Walmart Tumblr Disqus

Adoption of Timing-Allow-Origin Header (Top Alexa Websites)

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Title Textjsmanners

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Title Texthttps://github.com/triblondon/

Contribute on Github!

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Next time before you copy and paste


• Refuse 3rd party content that doesn’t provide async options or is not minified

• Put the risk in the SLA (uptime etc.)

• Review jsmanners

• Educate other (junior) developers

• Test it via navigation and resource timing where applicable

What to do as a Publisher & Developer


• Ask for server-side options

• Evaluate tag managers

• Investigate hosted libraries (if no own CDN is available)

• Monitor, monitor, ….and monitor

• Evaluate the need of the script with marketing and sales

What to do as a Publisher & Developer


What to do as a Script Provider

• Provide non-blocking code samples and snippets

• Educate developers, and verify the integration of your script (proof-check)

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The Party’s OverThank you

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Questions?bit.ly/webrebels

Shameless Plug: I wrote a book “Lean Websites” (SitePoint)

Release: end of May 2015

http://bit.ly/3rdparty-london

3rd Party Footprint @ Webrebels

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