Journal tags: lighthouse

I’m a little obsessed with web performance. I like being able to check a page’s core web vitals quickly and easily.

Four years ago, I made a Lighthouse bookmarklet. Whatever web page you were on, when you clicked on the bookmarklet you’d get the Lighthouse results for that page. Handy!

It doesn’t work anymore. This is probably because Google are in the loop. Four years is pretty good innings for anything involving that company.

I kid (mostly). Lighthouse itself is still going strong, despite being a Google product. But the bookmarklet needs updating.

Rather than just get Lighthouse results, I figured that the full PageSpeed Insights results would be even better. If your website is in the Chrome UX report, you get to see those CrUX details too.

So here’s the updated bookmarklet:

PageSpeed Insights

Drag that up to your desktop browser’s bookmarks toolbar. Press it whenever you want to test the page you’re on.

I use Firefox. You should too. It’s fast, secure, and more privacy-focused than the leading browser from the big G.

When it comes to web development, the CSS developer tooling in Firefox is second-to-none. But when it comes to JavaScript and network-related debugging (like service workers), Chrome’s tools are currently better than Firefox’s (for now). For example, Chrome has a tab in its developer tools that lets you run Lighthouse on the currently open tab.

Yesterday, I got the Calibre newsletter, which always has handy performance-related links from Karolina. She pointed to a Lighthouse extension for Firefox. “Excellent!”, I thought, and I immediately installed it. But I had some qualms about installing a plug-in from Google into a browser from Mozilla, particularly as the plug-in page says:

This is not a Recommended Extension. Make sure you trust it before installing

Well, I gave it a go. It turns out that all it actually does is redirect to the online version of Lighthouse. “Hang on”, I thought. “This could just be a bookmarklet!”

So I immediately uninstalled the browser extension and made this bookmarklet:

Lighthouse

Drag that up to your desktop browser’s bookmarks toolbar. Press it whenever you’re on a site that you want to test.

If you’re already in Brighton for dConstruct this week, there are two art shows you might want to check out:

Timo Arnall and friends are presenting their Immaterials exhibit at Lighthouse, 28 Kensington Street. Timo has written a few words about the exhibit. The exhibition is open from tomorrow, September 5th until October 13th, and the opening is tonight, Wednesday, at 6pm.

Just around the corner at the Ink-d gallery on North Road, the opening of Jon Burgerman’s exhibit is happening at exactly the same time: 6pm this evening. His Failure of Judgement exhibition runs from tomorrow, September 5th to October 6th.

Jon’s opening will also include the debut of the world’s first “Jon Burgerman Veggie Burger” courtesy of Burger Brothers next door.

And if you haven’t gorged yourself too much on art after this evening, don’t forget that there’s a whole programme of different art shows running this month at 68 Middle Street.