#chromedev

Learn how to enhance the security of your Chrome extensions with best practices. Safeguard user data and build trust while delivering a seamless experience.

Discover how to choose the right tech stack for building Chrome extensions that meet your needs and goals. Explore factors to consider and how to align technology choices with your project's requirements.

Easily publish your Chrome extension with our step-by-step guide. From preparation to submission, we cover everything you need to get your extension live on the Web Store.

Chrome DevTools is a set of web developer tools built directly into the Google Chrome browser. DevTools can help you edit pages on-the-fly and diagnose problems quickly, which ultimately helps you build better websites, faster. As a digital marketing agency, it’s essential to understand the backend of technology to be able to provide better solutions, faster.

And improved site performance is essential for any brand to have better visibility, and to prepare better inbound marketing strategies.

TWO IMPORTANT GOOGLE CHROME DEVTOOLS TO IMPROVE YOUR SITE PERFORMANCE ARE –

Performance Tool

Audit tool or Lighthouse

How can you access these tools?

Load your website in a Chrome browser

Right click on you webpage

Click on ‘inspect Element’

You will see different tabs – Elements, Console , Sources , Network, Performance, Memory, Application, Audits (recently named as Lighthouse) , Security

Here, we are going to discuss two tools which are on 5th and 8th tab from the left when we access the “inspect element” section of the webpage

Performance Tool:

To record Ctrl + E

To reload Ctrl+Shift+E  (to record page load)

Performance tool helps you to check load time of each element on your webpage. It helps to check runtime performance and load performance. Runtime performance is the performance of page when it is running and load performance refers to the performance of the page when it is loading. Both help to identify performance issues that affect speed and overall user experience.

This performance report shows frame by frame load time.

While running a performance tool, you will see load time taken by each element. You will encounter different terminologies on horizontal frames such as FP, FCP, LCP, FMP, DCL etc. Let’s have a look at each of these terms.

FP – First Paint

It is the time taken by first pixel when painted onto the webpage.

FCP – First Contentful Paint

It is a first content render on the webpage when user browses the website.

LCP – Largest Contentful Paint

It measures the loading performance of a website. LCP means time taken by largest element on the website to load. Ideal LCP score should not be more than 2.5 seconds.

FMP – First Meaningful Paint

As the name suggests, First Meaningful Paint means the time taken to provide the first meaningful information to users.

DCL – DOM Content Loaded

It measures when the HTML document on a webpage is loaded and parsed.

Audit or Lighthouse Tool:

An Audit tab gives you an overview of the metrics that improves performance, accessibility, SEO and other best practices areas.  It is also known as Google lighthouse report.

This is what the Lighthouse pane looks like (see below). You can check scores of the above-mentioned metrics for your website. They give scores for both the devices i.e. mobile as well as desktop. You can also check the performance score for the Progressive Web App if you have it.

To run this tool, you have to right click on the webpage you want to test. Then, click on “Inspect Element”. It opens up a pane where you will see this Lighthouse tab. After clicking on a “Generate Report”, it will provide a score as shown below –

With Lighthouse reports, you may get these recommendations that can help you to improve site speed –

A. Performance

Information regarding render-blocking resources

Server response time

Information about impact of third party codes on the website

Header information and server push

JavaScript execution time

Website cache policy

Number of requests to resources required to load the webpage i.e. request count

LCP (Large Contentful Paint elements) & CLS (Cumulative Layout Shifts on elements) issues. Read more about LCP & CLS issues here – https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9205520?hl=en

Information about minifying CSS & JavaScripts as well as HTML

Image Sizes and formats

DOM size

Network payloads

Unused codes like CSS and JS

Recommendations on animate content

B. Accessibility

Colours and contrast

Navigations

Names and labels for images, links and form elements

Meta viewport tag for mobile

Language attributes

C. Best Practices

Security aspects of JavaScript libraries used

Security in terms of HTTPS signals

Security aspects of cross-origin destinations

Copy-paste values into form fields

D. SEO

Image alt attributes

Tap sizes on mobile devices

Structured data

Meta viewport tags for mobile

Meta title and descriptions

HTTP response code

Status for robots.txt

Indexing status

Hreflang tags and canonical tags

Font sizes

Information about plugins

E. Progressive Web App

Page load information on mobile networks

Information about installability such as service worker and web app manifest

Redirections

Use of HTTPS

Cross-browser functionality

And other PWA optimisation aspects

Bonus: Alternative to Google Chrome Lighthouse tool is web.dev

Hope running these easy tests will help improve your site speed and performance. If you need any assistance to audit your website, contact Liqvd Asia tech and SEO support here!

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