Frontend-First Performance Optimization

Some time ago when we talked about performance we primarily meant backend performance. We usually solved performance issues by tuning server software and optimizing PHP code of web applications. We didn’t care about frontend much.

Now the growth of cloud services and automation of backend tasks have significantly increased user expectations on page load speed. From the other side, mobile devices have almost replaced desktops. Thus, the page size and speed of frontend have become crucial on 3G networks and the backend optimization is not enough anymore. Web developers have to shift their focus to the frontend performance.

In Drupal 7 we have a good basis of features that help to reduce page load time, for example CSS/JS aggregation and caching system. Those features were developed quite a long time ago and they don’t reflect modern frontend requirements. So there is obviously room for improvement.

We will be talking about frontend optimization techniques that make application load faster and wiser. Here are some of the topics we will cover:

• Minifying of assets
• Optimizing HTML markup
• Getting rid of slow jQuery scripts
• New HTML5 solutions for old problems
• The state of frontend performance of Drupal 8 core

At the end of the presentation we will show results of described optimizations on example.

The session will be useful for frontend developers as well as backend developers who want to keep their finger on the pulse of modern web development techniques.