In my earlier article, I talked about Waterbear, a big undertaking I labored on as a newly-appointed lead developer, and the teachings I realized main a group for the primary time. On this second article, I’ll go over some key technical highlights from the undertaking. Earlier than we begin, let’s rapidly remind ourselves what WaterBear is all about and what makes it so fascinating.
WaterBear is a free platform bringing collectively inspiration and motion with award-winning high-production environmental documentaries masking varied subjects, from animals and local weather change to folks and communities. The WaterBear group produces their very own unique movies and documentaries and hosts curated movies and content material from varied high-profile companions, together with award-winning filmmakers, giant manufacturers, and important non-governmental organizations (NGOs), like Greenpeace, WWF, The Jane Goodall Institute, Ellen MacArthur Basis, Nikon, and lots of others.
For context, I’m at present working at a software program growth firm referred to as Q Company primarily based in Zagreb, Croatia. We collaborated with WaterBear and its companion firms to construct a revamped and redesigned model of WaterBear’s net and cell app from the bottom up utilizing trendy front-end applied sciences.
Within the first article, I briefly mentioned the technical stack that features a React-based front-end framework, Subsequent.js for the net app, Sanity CMS, Firebase Auth, and Firestore database. Positively learn up on the technique and reasoning behind this stack within the first article when you missed it.
Now, let’s dive into the technical options and finest practices that my group adopted within the means of constructing the WaterBear net app. I plan on sharing particularly what I realized from efficiency and accessibility practices as a first-time lead developer of a group, in addition to what I want I had identified earlier than we began.
Picture Optimization
Photos are items of content material in lots of contexts, and they’re a vital and distinguished a part of the WaterBear app’s expertise, from video posters and class banners to companion logos and marketing campaign picture belongings.
I believe that in case you are studying this text, you possible know the tightrope stroll between putting, immersive imagery and performant consumer experiences we do as front-enders. A few of you will have even grimaced on the heavy use of pictures in that final screenshot. My group measured the affect, noting that on the primary load, this video class web page serves up as many as 14 pictures. Digging a little bit deeper, we noticed these pictures account for roughly 85% of the full web page measurement.
That’s not insignificant and calls for consideration. WaterBear’s product is visible in nature, so it’s comprehensible that pictures are going to play a big function in its net app expertise. Even so, 85% of the expertise feels heavy-handed.
So, my group knew early on that we might be leveraging as many picture optimization methods as we might that will assist enhance how rapidly the web page masses. If you wish to know all the things there’s to optimize pictures, I wholeheartedly advocate Addy Osami’s Picture Optimization for a treasure trove of insightful recommendation, ideas, and finest practices that helped us enhance WaterBear’s efficiency.
Right here is how we tackled the problem.
Utilizing CDN For Caching And WebP For Lighter File Sizes
As I discussed a little bit earlier, our stack consists of Sanity’s CMS. It affords a strong content material supply community (CDN) out of the field, which serves two functions: (1) optimizing picture belongings and (2) caching them. Members of the WaterBear group are capable of add unoptimized high-quality picture belongings to Sanity, which ports them to the CDN, and from there, we instruct the CDN to run acceptable optimizations on these pictures — issues like compressing the information to their smallest measurement with out impacting the visible expertise, then caching them so {that a} consumer doesn’t need to obtain the picture once more on subsequent views.
Requesting the optimized model of the photographs in Sanity boils all the way down to including question variables to picture hyperlinks like this:
https://cdn.sanity.io/…/picture.jpg?w=1280&q=70&auto=format
Let’s break down the question variables:
w units the width of the picture. Within the instance above, we’ve got set the width to 1280px within the question.
q units the compression high quality of the picture. We landed on 70% to steadiness the necessity for visible high quality with the necessity for optimized file sizes.
format units the picture format, which is about to auto, permitting Sanity to find out the most effective kind of picture format to make use of primarily based on the consumer’s browser capabilities.
Discover how all of that comes from a URL that’s mapped to the CDN to fetch a JPG file. It’s fairly magical how a very unoptimized picture file might be remodeled into a totally optimized model that serves as a very totally different file with the usage of just a few parameters.
In lots of circumstances, the format can be returned as a WebP file. We made certain to make use of WebP as a result of it yields important financial savings when it comes to file measurement. Do not forget that unoptimized 1.2 MB picture from earlier? It’s a mere 146 KB after the optimizations.
And all 14 picture requests are smaller than that one unoptimized picture!
The truth that pictures nonetheless account for 85% of the web page weight is a testomony to simply how heavy of a web page we’re speaking about.
One other factor we’ve got to think about when speaking about trendy picture codecs is browser help. Though WebP is broadly supported and has been a staple for a while now, my group determined to supply an optimized fallback JPG simply in case. And once more, Sanity mechanically detects the consumer’s browser capabilities. This fashion, we serve the WebP model provided that Sanity is aware of the browser helps it and solely present the optimized fallback file if WebP help isn’t there. It’s nice that we don’t need to make that call ourselves!
Have you ever heard of AVIF? It’s one other trendy picture format that guarantees potential financial savings even larger than WebP. If I’m being sincere, I’d have most popular to make use of it on this undertaking, however Sanity sadly doesn’t help it, a minimum of on the time of this text. There’s a long-running ticket so as to add help, and I’m holding hope we get it.
Would we’ve got gone a unique route had we identified concerning the lack of AVIF help earlier? Cloudinary helps it, for instance. I don’t suppose so. Sanity’s tightly coupled CDN integration is just too nice of a developer profit, and as I mentioned, I’m hopeful Sanity will give us that help sooner or later. However that’s actually the type of consideration I want I’d have had early on, and now I’ve that in my again pocket for future initiatives.
Tackling The Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
LCP is the largest factor on the web page {that a} consumer sees on the preliminary load. You need to optimize it as a result of it’s the primary impression a consumer has with the web page. It must load as quickly as potential whereas all the things below it might probably wait a second.
For us, pictures are most undoubtedly a part of the LCP. By giving extra consideration to the banner pictures we load on the prime of the web page, we will serve that part a little bit sooner for a greater expertise. There are a few trendy picture attributes that may assist right here: loading and fetchpriority.
We used an keen loading technique paired with a excessive fetchpriority on the photographs. This offers the browser with a few hints that this picture is tremendous essential and that we would like it early within the loading course of.
<!– Above-the-fold Giant Contentful Paint picture –>
<img
loading=”keen”
fetchpriority=”excessive”
alt=”…”
src=”…”
width=”1280″
top=”720″
class=”…”
/>
We additionally made use of preloading within the doc <head>, indicating to the browser that we need to preload pictures throughout web page load, once more, with excessive precedence, utilizing Subsequent.js picture preload choices.
<head>
<hyperlink
rel=”preload”
as=”picture”
href=”…”
fetchpriority=”excessive”
/>
</head>
Photos which are “under the fold” might be de-prioritized and downloaded solely when the consumer really wants it. Lazy loading is a typical method that instructs the browser to load specific pictures as soon as they enter the viewport. It’s solely pretty lately that it’s develop into a function baked straight into HTML with the loading attribute:
<!– Beneath-the-fold, low-priority picture –>
<img
decoding=”async”
loading=”lazy”
src=”…”
alt=”…”
width=”250″
top=”350″
/>
This cocktail of methods made a noticeable distinction in how rapidly the web page masses. On these image-heavy video class pages alone, it helped us scale back the picture obtain measurement and variety of picture requests by virtually 80% on the primary load! Regardless that the web page will develop in measurement because the consumer scrolls, that weight is simply added if it passes by means of the browser viewport.
In Progress: Implementing srcset
My group is extremely proud of how a lot efficiency financial savings we’ve made thus far. However there’s no must cease there! Each millisecond counts with regards to web page load, and we’re nonetheless planning extra work to optimize pictures even additional.
The duty we’re at present planning will implement the srcset attribute on pictures. This isn’t a “new” method by any means, however it’s actually a part of contemporary efficiency practices. It’s additionally a key part in responsive design, because it instructs browsers to make use of sure variations of a picture at totally different viewport widths.
We’ve held off on this work solely as a result of, for us, the opposite methods represented the lowest-hanging fruit with essentially the most affect. a picture factor that makes use of srcset within the HTML exhibits it’s not the best factor to learn. Utilizing it requires a sure stage of artwork course as a result of the size of a picture at one display measurement could also be fully totally different than these at one other display measurement. In different phrases, there are extra concerns that include this technique.
Right here’s how we’re planning to strategy it. We need to keep away from loading high-resolution pictures on small screens like telephones and tablets. With the srcset attribute, we will specify separate picture sources relying on the system’s display width. With the sizes attribute, we will instruct the browser which picture to load relying on the media question.
Ultimately, our picture markup ought to look one thing like this:
<img
width=”1280″
top=”720″
srcset=”
https://cdn.sanity.io/…/picture.jpg?w=568&… 568w,
https://cdn.sanity.io/…/picture.jpg?w=768&… 768w,
https://cdn.sanity.io/…/picture.jpg?w=1280&… 1280w
“
sizes=”(min-width: 1024px) 1280px, 100vw”
src=”https://cdn.sanity.io/…/picture.jpg?w=1280&…”
/>
On this instance, we specify a set of three pictures:
Small: 568px,
Medium: 768px,
Giant: 1280px.
Contained in the sizes attribute, we’re telling the browser to make use of the biggest model of the picture if the display width is above 1024px huge. In any other case, it ought to default to deciding on an acceptable picture out of the three accessible variations primarily based on the complete system viewport width (100vw) — and can achieve this with out downloading the opposite variations. Offering totally different picture information to the suitable gadgets ought to assist improve our efficiency a bit greater than it already is.
Enhancing CMS Efficiency With TanStack Question
Nearly all of content material on WaterBear comes from Sanity, the CMS behind the net app. This consists of video classes, video archives, video pages, the companions’ web page, and marketing campaign touchdown pages, amongst others. Customers will always navigate between these pages, regularly returning to the identical class or touchdown web page.
This supplied my group with a possibility to introduce question caching and keep away from repeating the identical request to the CMS and, in consequence, optimize our web page efficiency much more. We used TanStack Question (previously often known as react-query) for each fetching knowledge and question caching.
const { isLoading, error, knowledge } = useQuery( /* Choices */ )
TanStack Question caches every request based on the question key we assign to it. The question key in TanStack Question is an array, the place the primary factor is a question title and the second factor is an object containing all values the question is dependent upon, e.g., pagination, filters, question variables, and so forth.
Let’s say we’re fetching an inventory of movies relying on the video class web page URL slug. We are able to filter these outcomes by video period. The question key would possibly look one thing like this fundamental instance:
const { isLoading, error, knowledge } = useQuery(
{
queryKey: [
‘video-category-list’,
{ slug: categorySlug, filterBy: activeFilter }
],
queryFn: () => /* … */
}
)
These question keys would possibly look complicated at first, however they’re just like the dependency arrays for React’s useEffect hook. As a substitute of working a operate when one thing within the dependency array modifications, it runs a question with new parameters and returns a brand new state. TanStack Question comes with its devoted DevTools bundle. It shows all types of helpful details about the question that helps debug and optimize them with out problem.
Let’s see the question caching in motion. Within the following video, discover how knowledge masses immediately on repeated web page views and repeated filter modifications. Evaluate that to the primary load, the place there’s a slight delay and a loading state earlier than knowledge is proven.
We’re in all probability not even masking all of our bases! It’s so powerful to inform with out ample consumer testing. It’s a conflicting scenario the place you need to do all the things you may whereas realistically finishing the undertaking with the sources you have got and proceed with intention.
We made certain to incorporate a label on interactive parts like buttons, particularly ones the place the icon is the one content material. For that case, we added visually hidden textual content whereas permitting it to be learn by assistive gadgets. We additionally made certain to disguise the SVG icon from the assistive gadgets as SVG doesn’t add any extra context for assistive gadgets.
<button kind=”button” class=”…”>
<svg aria-hidden=”true” xmlns=”…” width=”22″ top=”22″ fill=”none”>…</svg
><span class=”visually-hidden”>Open filters</span>
</button>
.visually-hidden {
place: absolute;
width: 1px;
top: 1px;
overflow: hidden;
white-space: nowrap;
clip: rect(0 0 0 0);
-webkit-clip-path: inset(50%);
clip-path: inset(50%);
}
Supporting keyboard navigation was one in all our accessibility priorities, and we had no bother with it. We made certain to make use of correct HTML markup and keep away from potential pitfalls like including a click on occasion to meaningless div parts, which is sadly really easy to do in React.
We did, nonetheless, hit an impediment with modals as customers have been capable of transfer focus outdoors the modal part and proceed interacting with the principle web page whereas the modal was in its open state, which isn’t potential with the default pointer and contact interplay. For that, we carried out focus traps utilizing the focus-trap-react library to maintain the deal with modals whereas they’re opened, then restore focus again to an energetic factor as soon as the modal is closed.
Dynamic Sitemaps
Sitemaps inform search engines like google and yahoo which pages to crawl. That is sooner than simply letting the crawler uncover inner hyperlinks by itself whereas crawling the pages.
The significance of sitemaps within the case of WaterBear is that the group commonly publishes new content material — content material we need to be listed for crawlers as quickly as potential by including these new hyperlinks to the highest of the sitemap. We don’t need to rebuild and redeploy the undertaking each time new content material has been added to Sanity, so dynamic server-side sitemaps have been our logical alternative.
We used the next-sitemap plugin for Subsequent.js, which has allowed us to simply configure the sitemap technology course of for each static and dynamic pages. We used the plugin alongside customized Sanity queries that fetch the newest content material from the CMS and rapidly generate a recent sitemap for every request. That approach, we made certain that the newest movies get listed as quickly as potential.
Let’s say the WaterBear group publishes a web page for a video named My Title is Salt. That will get added to a freshly generated XML sitemap:
Now, it’s listed for search engines like google and yahoo to scoop up and use in search outcomes:
Till Subsequent Time…
On this article, I shared some insights about WaterBear’s tech stack and a few efficiency optimization methods we utilized whereas constructing it.
Photos are used very prominently on many web page varieties on WaterBear, so we used CDN with caching, loading methods, preloading, and the WebP format to optimize picture loading efficiency. We relied on Sanity for almost all of content material administration, and we anticipated repeating web page views and queries on a single session, prompting us to implement question caching with TanStack Question.
We made certain to enhance fundamental accessibility on the fly by styling focus states, enabling full keyboard navigation, assigning labels to icon buttons, offering alt textual content for pictures, and utilizing focus traps on modal parts.
Lastly, we coated how my group dealt with dynamic server-side rendered sitemaps utilizing the next-sitemap plugin for Subsequent.js.
Once more, this was my first huge undertaking as lead developer of a group. There’s a lot that comes with the territory. Not solely are there inner processes and communication hurdles to ascertain a collaborative group surroundings, however there’s the technical aspect of issues, too, that requires balancing priorities and making powerful selections. I hope my studying journey provides you one thing precious to think about in your personal work. I do know that my group isn’t the one one with these types of challenges, and sharing the teachings I realized from this specific expertise in all probability resonates with a few of you studying this.
Please remember to try the complete work we did on WaterBear. It’s accessible on the net, Android, and iOS. And, if you find yourself watching a documentary whilst you’re at it, let me know if it impressed you to take motion on a trigger!
References
Quick load occasions (net.dev)
“Conceal Content material,” Dave Rupert (The A11Y Mission)
“Use WebP pictures,” Katie Hempenius (net.dev)
“Accessible SVGs: Good Patterns For Display Reader Customers,” Carie Fisher
TanStack Question Documentation
Many due to WaterBear and Q Company for serving to out with this two-part article sequence and making it potential. I actually wouldn’t have completed this with out their help. I’d additionally wish to commend everybody who labored on the undertaking for his or her excellent work! You have got taught me a lot thus far, and I’m grateful for it.
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