Posts tagged ramblings

Wednesday 21st April 2021 was a day like no other. This certainly isn't my usual web performance related blog post!

The 'Graph Page Data' view is a one of those WebPageTest features that is hidden in plain sight. So lets shine a light on it and see what it can do.

Cloudflare Workers are an awesome tool for rapid prototyping and observing web performance changes, here are a few recipes you may find useful.

Priority hints may be on hold, but you can still enable them and investigate what they can do. And in one instance I found a nice set of improvements to visual metrics.

It's important to remember staff members are users too, so optimise your internal tools for performance for more productive and less stressed workforce! Here are some tools and resources to help you out.

A small change in the ordering of your font sources in the `@font-face` rule can have a big impact on data and web performance, especially when used in conjunction with the `preload` resource hint.

Let's examine the WebPageTest homepage and investigate what all the settings do, including examples of what you can use them for.

It's amazing what a difference a single little response header can have on web performance. Lets 'fix' it at the edge with a Cloudflare Worker CDN.

Your may not think it, but your 404 page is an important part of your potential user journey. You should test its web performance as it can have a big impact on your users experience.

TLS 1.3 is the new kid on the cryptographic protocols block. It offers better security and better initial connection web performance. And IPv6 is a 'new' internet protocol. Lets examine some shiny new things!

A simple blog post bringing all the resources I used and created in the GOV.UK HTTP/2 work.

Custom dashboards and graphs are a really powerful feature of SpeedCurve. Here's a few examples of how we at GDS are using them for synthetic web performance monitoring.

The `font-display` property is a great way to tweak the way your fonts load, especially useful as fonts have a large effect on the perceived performance of your website.

SSL certificate revocation is complex, but absolutely necessary. And your choice of what certificate to use for your site is important, and you should consider its impact on web performance when doing so too.

There's more to WebPageTest than the Waterfall View. In this post I look at the the 'Connection View' and how it can be used to spot web performance issues.

Enabling HTTP/2 doesn't always lead to web performance gains. I believe I may have finally solved a mystery of why performance got worse in some cases.

I don't have any comment functionality on this blog, but I now have Webmentions available. Here's how I did it.

WebPageTest waterfall charts are a very powerful web performance tool, but can sometimes be a little confusing. Maybe this post can change that.

Recently something has gone slightly awry with the clouds in the header on Chrome. I wonder what it could be?

If you have a dig around inside the iTerm2 settings you will find lots to play with like 'Smart Selection'. We can use it to our advantage.

Using a UNIX shell is all the rage nowadays, even Windows 10 are doing it!

A lot can happen in two and a half years since my original build. Time to pull my sleeves up and make the old website responsive!

I've never seen this functionality in any page I've used. Auto-spacing a credit card number as you type. I must admit I'm not a big fan of the idea, but lets build it anyway!

Time to say goodbye to all other text editors. Sublime Text 2 has a killer set of features and it's quick too!

After traveling through South East Asia for three months I've finally settled back into work. I've started a new job at an excellent digital agency called Visual Jazz Isobar!

With browsers getting faster all the time it's a good idea to remember that not everyone uses them. Writing efficient code is key to maximising device accessibility.

Who would have thought version control could be so easy and fun? It can be with Git!

As anyone who has worked on the web knows, a lot can change in three months. Time to get back to work and catch up with the latest goings on.

It's time to travel the globe, very nervous but extremely excited! SE Asia and Oz here we come!

The Wordpress auto update feature is superb; when it works. When it doesn't it can make you cry. Luckily there can be a quick fix.

What could make Wordpress any better? What about the ability to edit your posts directly in the page? Yay!

As a long time user of Firebug for Firefox, Google Chrome's Developer Tools are making me think about changing my debug tool!

Cool graphics in the browser, the demoscene has woken up to WebGL. Bring on the amazing demos!

Mozilla Labs and Six to Start put on a great evening event in Shoreditch dedicated to the future of Open Web Gaming.

The web is becoming very exciting at the moment. Come up with an interesting idea and just build it. Open data is the future!

After attending Full Frontal 2009 I didn't want to miss out on this great conference in 2010.

Microsoft have finally pulled their finger out and produced a respectable browser* (*Only for Vista and Windows 7 users)

Today is a sad day for Mathematics, the maths genius Benoit Mandelbrot lost his battle with cancer.

I've finally taken the plunge and I'm ditching Aptana IDE. I've been wanting to for a while but haven't found the right alternative.. until now.

A little bit of Drupal knowledge goes a long way! This amazing open source CMS allows you to build large scale websites easily.

The Mandelbrot set seems to pop up everywhere as it's without a doubt the most famous fractal. So heres a video.

There are many ways to edit and update content on a website, but none of them look quite a easy as Aloha Editor.

You can buy all the books on visualisation technologies but what's the point if you never read them? Time to change that.

Snipplr was one of my favorite online coding tools until the new owners ruined it and let it stagnate. Now it's under new management!

Google Chrome has a superb feature called 'Create application shortcut...'. To polish off this feature with your web application use high resolution icons.

Converting your current posts isn't as easy as it looks. If you are comfortable editing the DB directly it's fairly simple.

Upgrading to the latest version of Wordpress on my development server didn't quite go as smoothly as expected.

Subversion is usually quite boring; why not add a little bit of Gource to make it a little more interesting!

Here's a list I recommend for any Front End Web Developer just starting out in the big wild virtual world or web development.

With CSS3 it is now possible to add content to the page only using CSS. The content / layout lines are blurring just a little...

Added a little feature to the CodeColourer Wordpress plug-in on my website that I'd thought I'd share with people.

NextGEN gallery just got a little smoother with this fine addition.

Simple plug-in for hiding content above the page which is shown by clicking a tab.

NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day website looks terrible, using some CSS3 and Firefox you can make it a little more presentable.

It looks like Microsoft are finally getting their act together with their up and coming version of Internet Explorer.

Things have stagnated on Snipplr.com, it's time to look for another tool for my code snippets.

jQuery Enlightenment is an excellent book by Cody Lindley

Get all the latest inside information of the new Formula One season via Twitter.

Finally solved an issue I'd been having with a couple of themes and the preview post functionality...

Here are a few websites I'd like to share with you, they can really speed up your working process.

jsFiddle just keeps getting better and better, the perfect tool for demonstrating your code snippets.

For a while now Feedburner and the blogs RSS feed haven't been playing nicely, I finally figured out why.

Google have been tweaking Gmail again. Labels disappeared? Here's a quick fix.

A few extensions I use with Firefox to make my Web Development life easier.

Frog CMS can be made even simpler to implement with a couple of handy little code snippets.

Searching for a simple CMS for a client? Why not give Frog CMS a try.

A quick and easy way to search websites from Google Chromes address bar.

You don't need a hammer and nails when you're a web developer. You do need your own set of tools thought . And maybe a tool belt...

Internet Explorer 6 and the abbreviation tag don't play well together.

Huzzah! Finally decided to do something with this domain. You have to start somewhere, my first blog post.