Ben Schwarz @benschwarz.bsky.social · 17hCloudflare bot detection is a mixture of bot traffic, likely largely website spidering, which is a huge part of Yandex’s core business — NOT social media comments from “bots”. I’d be happier knowing if AfDs online presence has diminished to zero, but is there actual evidence of that? 150
Ben Schwarz @benschwarz.bsky.social · 19hAWS Bahrain got bombed a few months ago and ain't coming back online 🙇♂️ 100
Ben Schwarz @benschwarz.bsky.social · 11/10/2026I’d have an easier time with this if they were saying fuck cloudflare x years ago when they knowingly hosted hateful content, and used “we’re like a utility company” as their defence. 120
Ben Schwarz @benschwarz.bsky.social · 10/10/2026This seems unfair given deno fired almost their entire team several months ago 000
Ben Schwarz @benschwarz.bsky.social · 09/10/2026Ooohh this is interesting — a style sheet language for 3D scenes. Going to take this for a spin 🔜 130
Ben Schwarz @benschwarz.bsky.social · 08/10/2026A few years ago a friend thought his computer was locked, but really the screen was dimmed — he typed his password into the group chat, twice. We all immediately knew what it was 😂 050
Ben Schwarz @benschwarz.bsky.social · 08/10/2026If we can align the legend text and labels on the left I will sleep slightly better. 080
Ben Schwarz @benschwarz.bsky.social · 06/10/2026booking.com cut their SSR costs by 38%. What stood out to me? they’re effectively shipping their org chart. One app per page (home, search, property). Teams own the components (header, footer, reviews), loaded at runtime. Conway’s law, shipped to production.medium.comNode.js at scale, rebalanced: how we cut cost by 38%By optimizing our biggest Node.js service, we cut our compute costs by 38% 1151
Ben Schwarz @benschwarz.bsky.social · 06/10/2026Pretty tricky situation imo. Not sure it's worth testing because ultimately you can't alter the browser behaviour, and lazy loaded off-screen images is better than not. Just something to be aware of going forward! 000
Ben Schwarz @benschwarz.bsky.social · 05/10/2026Weirdly many developers seem to have a loose grasp of what separation of concerns means, beyond a sound bite. 140
Ben Schwarz @benschwarz.bsky.social · 05/10/2026Sounds like you're on to a winner. Make good easy! 💅 010
Ben Schwarz @benschwarz.bsky.social · 05/10/2026I mean, they can be: ComponentName /ComponentName.js /ComponentName.css Either way, code organisation should never negatively impact UX. As long as your approach doesn’t, then all good in my book. 110
Ben Schwarz @benschwarz.bsky.social · 05/10/2026GitHub just finished ripping styled-components out of github.com. Result: 55% less time to server-render a page, 25% faster component init. CSS-in-JS makes you pay for styles twice: collecting them on the server, running JS on the client. Static CSS is *always* more efficient. Ship CSS. 2418
Ben Schwarz @benschwarz.bsky.social · 04/10/2026Sounds like you’ve gotta go to the theatre more often! 121
Ben Schwarz @benschwarz.bsky.social · 03/10/2026Maybe we should stop awarding those goons from Accenture or Deloitte tenders for projects, or, like, actually dip into the highly functioning tech sector Australia has. The issue lies in our ineffective government, which lacks basic competence regarding technology. 050
Ben Schwarz @benschwarz.bsky.social · 03/10/2026I was really hoping to talk to you about this during shoptalkshow the other day, next time gadget! 010
Ben Schwarz @benschwarz.bsky.social · 02/10/2026Are you sure Shopify won’t be the end of Tailwind? They have a track record 000
Ben Schwarz @benschwarz.bsky.social · 01/10/2026Here’s what it looks like when you disable ad tracking 🫣 040
Ben Schwarz @benschwarz.bsky.social · 01/10/2026Google started publishing ad metrics for websites, so naturally I went looking for the worst offender 🤓 The “award” goes to Italian news La Repubblica — where ads cover 96% (!!) of desktop viewports. (Experimental CrUX data.) Compare it yourself: calibreapp.com/tools/compar... 180
Ben Schwarz @benschwarz.bsky.social · 30/09/2026To be honest I should probably audit my usage of tooltips, but: - For info buttons (hiding and disclosing definitions). E.g what a webperf metric measures - Title attributes on links, buttons and other interactive elements That’s about it. I try to always use title when I can. 010
Reposted by Ben SchwarzChris Coyier @chriscoyier.net · 30/09/2026Come for the webperf, stay for Ben's smooth intelligent voice 1142
Ben Schwarz @benschwarz.bsky.social · 30/09/2026@shoptalkshow.com forgive me for not mentioning 🙄 Thanks for having me @chriscoyier.net @davatron5000.bsky.social, great to talk shop with y’all 030
Ben Schwarz @benschwarz.bsky.social · 30/09/202613 years after my first ShopTalk Show (episode 68!), Chris and Dave had me back to talk web performance: why airline websites are so slow, RUM vs synthetic testing, and whether fixing speed actually makes money ✈️🐢 shoptalkshow.com/734/shoptalkshow.com734: Web Performance with Ben SchwarzBen Schwarz stops by to discuss the state of web performance, using his research on airline websites as a case study. 1130
Ben Schwarz @benschwarz.bsky.social · 30/09/2026New as of Chrome 150: loading="lazy" on <video> and <audio>. A lazy video holds back its file, poster and autoplay until it's close. Firefox and Safari don't support it yet, so media there still loads straight away.calibreapp.comLazy Loading Images and Media: How Far Ahead Browsers FetchHow far ahead Chrome, Firefox and Safari fetch lazy media, why a lazy hero image slows your page, and where to use lazy, eager and fetchpriority. 021
Ben Schwarz @benschwarz.bsky.social · 29/09/2026I'm more of a Nia kind of guy. But special shout to ’The Truth‘ with Gab on the Handsome boy record. One of my favorite verses of all time 010
Ben Schwarz @benschwarz.bsky.social · 29/09/2026How far ahead browsers fetch lazy images: • Chrome: 1,250px on 4G, 2,500px on 3G, 6,000px (!!) on 2G • Firefox: 600px, on any connection • Safari: one viewport. Lazy iframes: 0px, they wait until on screencalibreapp.comLazy Loading Images and Media: How Far Ahead Browsers FetchHow far ahead Chrome, Firefox and Safari fetch lazy media, why a lazy hero image slows your page, and where to use lazy, eager and fetchpriority. 2118
Ben Schwarz @benschwarz.bsky.social · 29/09/2026I’d settle for user-agent styles that didn’t look like they were from 1997! But yea, would be great to style tooltips/titles so they look integrated 🙇♂️ 130
Ben Schwarz @benschwarz.bsky.social · 29/09/2026I haven’t authored an iframe in over a decade but I remember this being a really annoying detail. Responsive frames is great — you can also lazy load them, which is a bonus for performance 010
Ben Schwarz @benschwarz.bsky.social · 29/09/2026I rewrote our lazy loading guide with new usage data. Most pages still don’t use it. Chrome page loads using loading="lazy" (Sept 2026): • <img>: 26% • <iframe>: 1.5% • <video>: 0.06% • <audio>: 0.000039%calibreapp.comLazy Loading Images and Media: How Far Ahead Browsers FetchHow far ahead Chrome, Firefox and Safari fetch lazy media, why a lazy hero image slows your page, and where to use lazy, eager and fetchpriority. 060
Ben Schwarz @benschwarz.bsky.social · 28/09/2026I don't like to "go-in" on web frameworks because it's unproductive. BUT Unfortunately, this preload situation is just yet another example of React’s failed abstractions that make pages slower — unless you fix it. It's busy work created by the framework. React-apps are full of these concessions. 011
Ben Schwarz @benschwarz.bsky.social · 28/09/2026⚠️ PSA for React 19 SSR apps: React automatically preloads ALL server rendered images. Without hints, early bandwidth is needlessly wasted. Fix it: * LCP image → fetchPriority="high" * Never lazy load the LCP image * Below-the-fold images → loading="lazy" (this also stops React preloading them) 132
Ben Schwarz @benschwarz.bsky.social · 25/09/2026Hainan Airlines also deserves a mention: the only Skytrax top-10 carrier whose site ranks in the performance top 10. Shout-outs and what they're doing right: calibreapp.com/blog/airline...calibreapp.comIt’s official: Airline websites are slow, but they don’t have to be | CalibreWe analysed 111 airline websites and it confirmed what travellers have been feeling for years 000
Ben Schwarz @benschwarz.bsky.social · 25/09/2026Credit where it's due. Frontier tops the airline benchmark, and has trimmed LCP from 3.29s to 2.60s over 9 months. Small, steady wins. Ryanair has been quietly shipping perf improvements since I wrote about their redesign in 2015. A decade of discipline. 172
Ben Schwarz @benschwarz.bsky.social · 24/09/2026Australian government vulnerability disclosure car crash. We should 100% adopt GDPR, and other very common security practices Instead, they’ve left our asses swinging in the breeze, as usual 🤦♂️ 020
Ben Schwarz @benschwarz.bsky.social · 24/09/2026Given they’ve had several weeks to respond, it’s unacceptable that public info about the attack is so thin and vague. So many questions: What was exposed? Was it kept? Stored? Aggregated or shared with third parties? Why didn’t we hear about it for three weeks? What have they done since? 😾 060
Ben Schwarz @benschwarz.bsky.social · 23/09/2026The sites that pass (Frontier, Ryanair) aren't doing anything magic. They measure, find the worst page or interaction, fix it, repeat. Full breakdown: calibreapp.com/blog/airline...calibreapp.comIt’s official: Airline websites are slow, but they don’t have to be | CalibreWe analysed 111 airline websites and it confirmed what travellers have been feeling for years 041
Ben Schwarz @benschwarz.bsky.social · 23/09/20263. Custom UI from another era. Hand-rolled dropdowns, modals and expanders doing what <details>, <dialog> and popover now do natively, with smooth animation for free. 4. Not enough caching. HTML should be cached or served in under 500ms. One click shouldn't fire dozens of booking engine requests. 120
Ben Schwarz @benschwarz.bsky.social · 23/09/20261. Blocking interactions. Every click (date, seat, fare) waits on a server round-trip before the page paints. Those requests should be async. They aren’t. 2. Skeleton loaders that shift the layout. Click → lockup → skeleton → jump → content. That’s INP, CLS and LCP failing in sequence. 110
Ben Schwarz @benschwarz.bsky.social · 23/09/2026Why are airline websites so slow? After looking at 111 of them, it comes down to four things. A thread 🧵 192
Ben Schwarz @benschwarz.bsky.social · 23/09/2026Caught up with my favorite web duo to talk performance and user-experience. Episode dropping soon 🤠 @shoptalkshow.com 0110
Reposted by Ben SchwarzMatt Hodges @matthodges.bsky.social · 19/09/2026Very quick and dirty Jev test for hiring bias. One resume for a Wall Street job; asked whether the applicant should get a first-round interview. 76 evaluations, changing only the first name. 19 of each: White-associated men/women, Black-associated men/women. console.typesafe.ai/playground?s... 19474116
Ben Schwarz @benschwarz.bsky.social · 22/09/2026Great to reduce the TTL for new web platform features. I'd love to see other browsers roll to a more regular cadence too. 010
Ben Schwarz @benschwarz.bsky.social · 21/09/2026Cathay Pacific: HK$72.5B in passenger revenue, and the slowest booking site of any major airline. Shopify’s data says a 1 second LCP improvement is worth ~30% in conversions. Airlines aren’t shops, but even a fraction of that is a very large number. calibreapp.com/blog/airline-websites-are-slow 010
Ben Schwarz @benschwarz.bsky.social · 20/09/2026Safe spaces stay safe by removing those who cause harm, even if they “only” weaponise psychological safety in bad faith. You don't have to be polite about it. Don’t be nice. 0183
Ben Schwarz @benschwarz.bsky.social · 18/09/2026Everyone is rightfully happy to call out Ed Sheeran for bowing to pressure, but no one seems to be acknowledging that one of the world’s best known music artists felt compelled to bend over for fascists, and showed that he too can be controlled. That's where we're at right now. 140
Ben Schwarz @benschwarz.bsky.social · 18/09/2026I think you're spot on: they've got a market, and there's also a very non-trivial amount of effort/money/time to change anything for those environments. I don't think conversions are same as general e-commerce, BUT, what if there's a cool billion dollars per year available? Seems worth a sprint! 🤠 001
Ben Schwarz @benschwarz.bsky.social · 18/09/2026going to bathe, lunch, going to cycle, going to sun/beer/hang 000
Ben Schwarz @benschwarz.bsky.social · 17/09/2026Amadeus, Sabre, in-house and TravelSky all have fast and slow airlines. The full vendor breakdown, with TTFB per site: calibreapp.com/blog/airline...calibreapp.comIt’s official: Airline websites are slow, but they don’t have to be | CalibreWe analysed 111 airline websites and it confirmed what travellers have been feeling for years 010