Archive

Issue #65 | MARCH 30TH, 2023

Self-hosting a website on a solar powered Raspberry Pi

A conversation from the ClimateAction.Tech community about self-hosting a website on a solar powered Raspberry Pi.

Issue #64 | MARCH 18TH, 2023

Eleventy Plugin: Green Links

This week’s newsletter introduces a small Eleventy plugin I built at the end of February 2023.

Issue #63 | MARCH 3RD, 2023

CO2.js v0.12.0 introduces the ability to customise the figures used in carbon emissions calculations when using the Sustainable Web Design model, paving the way for more case specific carbon emissions estimates.

Issue #62 | FEBRUARY 17TH, 2023

Power measurements and CO2e estimates in Firefox Profiler

This week will be a quick look at power usage profiling that's available in Firefox Dev Tools Profiler, and the accompanying CO2e measurements.

Issue #61 | FEBRUARY 3RD, 2023

Making my website carbon aware

Building carbon awareness into products is an important strategy to in the challenge to develop a more sustainable future. In this post, I cover how I used Cloudflare Workers and real-time data to make this website carbon aware.

Issue #60 | JANUARY 18TH, 2023

Improving the accuracy of website carbon emissions estimates

Existing models for website carbon emissions are good for reaching a ballpark figure of website CO2 emissions. This post goes into some ways to generate more specific, accurate emissions estimates.

Issue #59 | JANUARY 6TH, 2023

2023. A look ahead.

I’m excited for the year of 2023, both professionally & personally.

Issue #58 | DECEMBER 23RD, 2022

2022 in review

A personal look back at the year that was, 2022.

Issue #57 | DECEMBER 9TH, 2022

Checking where website requests are coming from

This week I’m sharing a beta preview of a tool I’ve been working on. It’s called ReqCheck, and is built to help folks find out where all the different requests made by a web page are served from. I’m hoping it can be a tool for both web sustainability and web performance folks to use when auditing websites.

Issue #56 | NOVEMBER 25TH, 2022

Driven by defaults

I’ve been thinking about how we can drive broader change to make the web more sustainable and performant. As I’ll get into, I believe a large part of that comes from the defaults set by the tools and services we use.

Issue #55 | NOVEMBER 9TH, 2022

COP27 Egypt: A webpage sustainability review - Part 2

This is part two in which I will review the COP27 homepage, looking at it particularly in terms of it's website sustainability profile.

Issue #54 | OCTOBER 28TH, 2022

COP27 Egypt: A webpage sustainability review - Part 1

This is part one of two in which I will review the COP27 homepage, looking at it particularly in terms of it's website sustainability profile.

Issue #53 | OCTOBER 14TH, 2022

Website carbon: Beyond data transfer

Measuring the carbon emissions of websites and apps is no easy thing. Most tools use the amount of data being transferred to calculate the overall emissions. But to get more detailed, relevant results we need to go beyond just data transfer.

Issue #52 | SEPTEMBER 30TH, 2022

#52 - Bits & pieces

It’s issue 52 of Optimised, which means it’s the two year birthday for this little newletter.

Issue #51 | SEPTEMBER 16TH, 2022

CO2.js: An Open Library for Digital Carbon Reporting

This week I'm sharing an article I wrote for the Issue 4 of Branch Magazine. It is centered around the work I have done with The Green Web Foundation on their CO2.js library.

Issue #50 | SEPTEMBER 2ND, 2022

Microsoft propose sustainability section in Edge DevTools

I share some thoughts on the new proposal put forward by the MS Edge DevTools team for a new “Sustainability” tab to be included in the Edge browser’s DevTools.

Issue #49 | AUGUST 19TH, 2022

Building a digital carbon API with Cloudflare Workers and CO2.js

In this post we’ll build a simple API to calculate the carbon emissions for digital data transfer using CO2.js and Cloudflare Workers.

Issue #48 | AUGUST 5TH, 2022

A carbon aware internet

Knowing the carbon intensity of the electricity grids in which code runs can allow developers to make informed decisions about where/when to run their code.

Issue #47 | JULY 22ND, 2022

#47 - Bits & pieces

This week, I’ll be sharing some of my favourite articles and videos from the recent past.

Issue #46 | JULY 8TH, 2022

Testing a page with Builder.io’s Performance Insights

Performance Insights is a tool by Builder.io which, in their words, allows you to learn what improvements can have the greatest impact on your site's performance.

Issue #45 | JUNE 24TH, 2022

YouTube facades with Cloudflare Workers

YouTube embeds can added megabytes of data to a website, even if they are not watched by the user. This post looks at a way to use Cloudflare Workers plus a facade to reduce that initial data load.

Issue #44 | JUNE 10TH, 2022

Experiment with performance

This week’s newsletter is a very quick look at the new Opportunities & Experiments features that were added to WebPagetTest over the last week.

Issue #43 | MAY 27TH, 2022

Hidden in plain sight

I was recently shown a code snippet that that a designer friend implemented on a website to combat flash of unstyled text (FOUT). It did so in a way that could possibly have negative impacts on a visitor’s page loading experience.

Issue #42 | MAY 13TH, 2022

Take it easy with transitions

I’ve been doing a few audits of late, and one thing that keeps coming up is the use of transition effects on page load (or above the fold content). This week we’ll look at some of the performance pitfalls that can arise from this practice, as well as what you should keep in mind.

Issue #41 | APRIL 29TH, 2022

Introducing Flowty - Build low carbon, self-hosted Webflow sites

Webflow is a great service for designers who want to create amazing websites for clients. It does leave a few things on the table when it comes to web sustainability though. Flowty gives designers who build with Weblow the power to create fast, low-carbon, self-hosted sites in minutes.

Issue #40 | APRIL 15TH, 2022

Adding a Directory and API to ‘Are my third parties green?’

I’ve been taken aback by the reception ‘Are my third parties green?’ has received from the community. Since its launch in January the tool has expanded to now include a Directory and public API.

Issue #39 | APRIL 1ST, 2022

Creating user personas for website performance testing

The web makes it possible for businesses to reach audiences well outside of their immediate geographic area. This presents its own set of challenges to ensure online content and experiences remain fast for potential customers around the world.

Issue #38 | MARCH 18TH, 2022

New Web Vitals Responsive Metric Appears in the Wild

At Chrome Dev Summit 2021, Google introduced a couple of new potential Web Vitals metrics it’s looking into. One of these, responsiveness, has now begun appearing in the wild.

Issue #37 | MARCH 4TH, 2022

Checking the sustainability of third-party requests with “Are my third parties green?”

“Are my third parties green?” is an online tool that checks the sustainability of third-party requests made by any web page. This post provides some insights into how it was built, and what other features are planned.

Issue #36 | FEBRUARY 18TH, 2022

Render-blocking resources

When looking to optimise for paint metrics (First and Largest Contentful Paint for example), we’re almost certainly going to encounter render-blocking resources. In this post I’ll cover what they are, and some general tips on how to mitigate their impact on page performance.

Issue #35 | FEBRUARY 4TH, 2022

#35 - Bits & pieces

This week, as we celebrate Lunar New Year here in Taiwan, I’ll be sharing some of my favourite web perf. articles and videos from the past year.

Issue #34 | JANUARY 21ST, 2022

Testing a web page with PageSpeed Insights

PageSpeed Insights is a free performance testing tool by Google. In this post we’ll cover the basics of testing a web page with PageSpeed Insights, as well as how to understand the different test results.

Issue #33 | JANUARY 7TH, 2022

“Use less. Use green. Buy green.”

By using less power, using green power, and buying from green suppliers businesses and individuals alike can reduce their carbon footprint. How would we go about applying this same thinking to website performance and sustainability?

Issue #32 | DECEMBER 24TH, 2021

Approaches to video on the web

Video is becoming an increasingly critical part of the online experience. So how can you include video on a web page without hurting Core Web Vitals, performance or digital sustainability?

Issue #31 | DECEMBER 10TH, 2021

Using Treo's free Site Speed Test

In this post we'll look at how you can use Treo's free Site Speed Report to better understand real-user performance on your site, and make the case for performance in your organisation.

Issue #30 | NOVEMBER 26TH, 2021

Improving Webflow Core Web Vitals

Webflow makes it easy for content creators and marketing teams to build stylish websites fast. But this can come with the risk to publishing a site with poor Core Web Vitals. This issue covers some of the things to look out for when building with Webflow.

Issue #29 | NOVEMBER 12TH, 2021

Updates from Chrome Dev Summit 2021

A brief update on some of the announcements from the 2021 Chrome Dev Summit, and how they relate to web performance.

Issue #28 | OCTOBER 29TH, 2021

COP26.org: A quick sustainability check

With COP26 about to take place in Glasgow, let's take a quick look at how the COP26 homepage holds up in terms digital sustainability. What's its carbon footprint, and can it be improved?

Issue #27 | OCTOBER 15TH, 2021

Tracking real Core Web Vitals scores

This week we're going to look at a few different ways you can keep track of your site's own real world Core Web Vitals.

Issue #26 | OCTOBER 1ST, 2021

Reducing website carbon emissions

As our thirst for data, connectivity, and content grows, so does the portion of global carbon emissions attributed to the internet. In this post, we'll take a look at the steps frontend developers can take to make sites more efficient and better for the planet.

Issue #25 | SEPTEMBER 17TH, 2021

Stress testing site performance

As developers, we're normally building and testing websites on devices with decent specs, so testing how your site performs over a slow network or on a low-powered device is one way to help ensure real world performance.

Issue #24 | SEPTEMBER 3RD, 2021

Quick Performance Audit - Taiwan COVID Vaccination Website

Taiwan's COVID-19 vaccination website is integral to the government's vaccine rollout plans. This post is a quick website performance audit of the site.

Issue #23 | AUGUST 20TH, 2021

CSS can do that

Rather than immediately reaching for JavaScript to handle on-page interactions, why not stop and think Could CSS do that? You'd be surprised, it probably can.

Issue #22 | AUGUST 6TH, 2021

Proxying third-party requests

Using resources hosted by a third-party can seriously hurt website performance in a few ways, one of which is the need for the browser to establish a connection with another domain. In this issue, we'll cover how you can use a proxy to reduce the performance impact of this connection step.

Issue #21 | JULY 23RD, 2021