Blog - Page 1 of 8


Eliminate render blocking CSS to improve start render time
#Web performance
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Although this website scores a perfect 100 in PageSpeed Insights, that doesn't mean things can't be improved. First time visitors on slower connections used to see nothing for over 1.6s before finally seeing a fully rendered view. I'd like to explain how I rendered the view more progressively with inline and async CSS to improve start render time by 0.6s.

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Building a simple interface for logging web performance metrics
#Software engineering #Web performance #JavaScript
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I've started using Perfume.js on this site to capture web performance metrics including Core Web Vitals. As part of this, I wanted to create a flexible logging tool that would help me send this data to my Supabase backend but also handle logging any other performance data in the future, and heck, handle anything I might want to log!

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PostgreSQL Functions in Supabase
#Software engineering #JavaScript
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I love the RESTful API generated automatically by PostgREST from my Supabase PostgreSQL schema. However, at the beginning I did have concerns about how I could handle more complex queries … that was at least until I read more about PostgreSQL Functions and how to build them in Supabase!

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Store Netlify build data with Supabase
#Software engineering #Netlify #Ruby #JavaScript
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I've found it useful in the past to keep a close eye on build times because it can be easy to introduce code over time that drives the build time up. By the time you notice that this is becoming a pain point, it's very difficult to track down the offending pieces of code to resolve the issue.

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Dropping Webpack for Vite Part 2
#Software engineering #JavaScript #Netlify
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My previous post walked through my progress with swapping Webapck for Vite using the Middleman external pipeline. I was able to quickly see great performance improvements, reduced dev server and build times and a decent drop in the number of JavaScript dependencies. But there were still some issues and I knew I could improve things. Especially after I discovered Vite Ruby.

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Dropping Webpack for Vite Part 1
#Software engineering #JavaScript
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I have been using the Middleman external pipeline with Webpack to bundle my JavaScript and SCSS files and this approach has been working well after I eventually worked my way through all of the complexities of the initial Webpack configuration. But with so many bundlers available at the moment I thought it was time to see how things could be improved.

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Automated build process for my JavaScript documentation website
#Software engineering #Netlify #JavaScript
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My last blog post demonstrated how to build a JavaScript documentation website using JSDoc and have it deployed on Netlify. The process was a bit manual though so in this post I improve upon the solution by automating the build using a GitHub Action to ensure my documentation website is never out of sync with the documentation in my code base.

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Building a JavaScript documentation website
#Software engineering #Netlify #JavaScript
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I think code documentation works best when it lives side by side with the code it is documenting rather than being written in a separate document. When it's separate, it becomes easy for documentation to become stale. Out of sight, out of mind!

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Jest tests for Netlify Functions
#Software engineering #Netlify #JavaScript
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Have you struggled to figure out a good way to test your Netlify Functions? As you start to make more use of functions, you really need to have good unit tests in place for peace of mind during production deploys.

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Simple build step for Netlify Functions
#Software engineering #Netlify #JavaScript
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Netlify Functions are a fantastic way to extend the capabilities of a static site and enable you to easily build scalable and dynamic applications.

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