Google Sheets now offers enhanced support for combo charts, providing a more seamless experience when creating multi-series visualizations. | Learn more.

A centralized hub for meeting resources on the new Google Meet homepage

Finding the right notes or attachments for a meeting shouldn't feel like a scavenger hunt. We’re introducing a revamped Google Meet homepage on the web to help you stay organized and prepared throughout your entire meeting workflow. | Learn more.

Redesigned Google Classroom homepage with tailored views based on user’s role

Soon, Google Classroom will introduce a redesigned homepage globally across all editions to help teachers, students, and administrators easily find relevant content, resources, and tools tailored to their specific roles. | Learn more.

Gemini Alpha is now Gemini Beta

We’re updating the name of the Gemini Alpha program to "Gemini Beta." This new name more accurately reflects both the scale and the quality of the features that enter this launch stage. Please note that this is solely a branding change. This update does not alter any customer configurations, data privacy constraints, or pricing tiers. | Learn more.

Google Meet now organizes your meeting notes, transcripts, and recordings in your Google Drive

We’re making it easier for users to find meeting notes, transcripts and recordings in Google Drive. | Learn more.

View supporting calendar delegates in meeting guest list

When viewing a guest list in Google Calendar on the web, you will now see a new icon next to leaders who have a calendar delegate assisting them with scheduling support. Hovering over the icon will display the person’s information, allowing you to easily initiate a chat with them directly. | Learn more.

The announcements above were published on the Workspace Updates blog over the last week. Please refer to the original blog posts for complete details.

This update helps users quickly identify and contact the appropriate scheduling support for a leader to streamline communication and event coordination.

This icon is visible in several calendar views:

• Event details view
• Full-screen creation
• Side-by-side scheduling view

New icon surfacing the calendar delegate of a leader in the guest list in event details view

Getting started

• Admins: There is no admin control for this feature.
• End users: There is no end-user setting for this feature. Simply hover over the icon next to the person’s name to see more information about their scheduling support.

Rollout pace

• Rapid Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on July 23, 2026
• Scheduled Release domains: Full rollout (1–3 days for feature visibility) starting on August 3, 2026

Availability

• Available to all Google Workspace customers, Workspace Individual subscribers, and users with personal Google accounts

As a reminder, we’ll continue to announce new Gemini Beta features in the Google Developer Program (GDP) forum and the Gemini Beta Help Center. You must be an active Workspace customer and register to access GDP content; follow these instructions to sign up.

Getting started

• Admins: There is no change to existing admin controls. You will begin to see the "Gemini Beta" label replace "Gemini Alpha" in the Admin console and Help Center articles over the next several weeks.
• End users: There is no end user setting for this change.

Rollout pace

• Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on July 22, 2026

Availability

• Business: Business Starter, Standard, and Plus
• Enterprise: Enterprise Starter, Standard, and Plus
• Education Add-ons: Google AI Pro for Education

Resources

• Google Workspace Admin Help: Turn access to Google Workspace with Gemini Beta on or off
• Google Developer Program: Workspace Alpha Forum

• After a meeting, we’ll automatically upload these files to a new folder in the host’s My Drive called “Google Meet.”
• Within that “Google Meet” folder, these files will be automatically organized into subfolders for each meeting. Files from different instances of a recurring meeting will share one folder.
• Any meeting attendees with access to the meeting files will see shortcuts to these source files in their “Google Meet” Drive folders too..

Previously, these files were only uploaded to the host’s My Drive, not the attendees’, and the files weren’t organized by meeting.

Note: Shortly after we roll out this change, we’ll automatically move the existing “Meet Recordings” folder into the new “Google Meet” folder and rename it “Legacy Meet Recordings.” Users may see both “Meet Recordings” and “Google Meet” in their Google Drive for a brief period during this transition.

Getting started

• Admins: Existing "Meet Recordings" folders will be renamed to "Legacy Meet Recordings" and moved under the new "Google Meet" folder topology. Admins should audit any API scripts or automated workflows that rely on specific folder names or IDs.
• End users: Users will see their meeting artifacts automatically organized into meeting-specific sub-folders within the "Google Meet" folder, with shortcuts for easier findability.

Rollout pace

• Rapid Release domains: Full rollout (1–3 days for feature visibility) starting on July 22, 2026
• Scheduled Release domains: Full rollout (1–3 days for feature visibility) starting on July 30, 2026

Availability

• Available to all Google Workspace customers

Resources

• Google Meet Help: Record a video meeting
• Google Meet Help: Take notes for me in Google Meet

The new homepage provides a centralized view of your meeting agenda and essential artifacts, allowing you to:

• Prepare effectively: Quickly access meeting descriptions and calendar attachments for upcoming calls. 
• Follow through easily: Find meeting notes, recordings, and transcripts from past meetings without digging through your inbox or Drive.
• Manage your time: Use the new week and month navigators to look ahead at your schedule or revisit previous discussions.

Getting started

• Admins: There is no admin control for this feature. The new homepage experience will be available to all users with access to Google Meet on the web.
• End users: The new homepage experience will be available to all Meet users on the web. Visit meet.google.com to get started.

Rollout pace

• Rapid Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on July 21, 2026 
• Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on August 17, 2026

Availability

• Available to all Google Workspace customers and Workspace Individual subscribers

Resources

• Google Meet: Google Meet Homepage
• Google Meet Help: Use the Google Meet homepage

The new experience, which will begin rolling out on July 27, 2026, is personalized based on a user's role and available features:

• For teachers, a new dashboard gives actionable insights, highlights student classwork interactions, tracks assignment completion, and surfaces a feature spotlight to help discover instructional tools and resources.

• For students, a dedicated ‘Enrolled’ view reminds learners of coursework that is due soon and helps them manage their deadlines.

• For school leaders and IT administrators, the homepage provides a centralized view to monitor high-level performance analytics, access shortcuts for backend administrative settings, and discover relevant tools to support educators and staff.

Users who have multiple roles (such as a teacher taking a professional development class) can easily change their view dashboard by clicking into another role (for example, Teaching, Enrolled, or Admin). When a user loads the homepage, it returns to the previous role view.

To help users control their view and focus on what matters most to them, all new homepage modules are collapsible.

Please note that not all features and views will be available to all users. Eligibility is determined by the user’s role, feature access, account type, and settings.

Getting started

• Admins: There is no admin control for the new Classroom homepage. Gemini and Gemini Notebook features will only appear if the user is in an OU with Gemini in Classroom, Gemini app, and/or Gemini Notebook enabled. Visit the Help Center to learn about managing access to Gemini in Classroom, Gemini app, Gemini Notebook, and the option to turn these services on or off for users in the Admin console.
• End users: There is no end user setting for the new Classroom homepage. Visit the Help Center to learn more about the new Classroom homepage.

Rollout pace

• Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domains: Full rollout (1-3 days for visibility) starting July 27, 2026

Availability

• Available to all Google Workspace customers, Workspace Individual subscribers, and users with personal Google accounts

Resources

• Google Classroom Help: Navigate your Classroom Homepage
• 2026: What’s New in Google for Education: Overview of Classroom Homepage

User creating a combo chart in Google Sheets

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

Resources

Google Credential Provider for Windows (GCPW) has been updated to support FIDO2-compliant physical security keys as a second factor for authentication. This update helps organizations improve their security posture by enabling administrators to enforce 2-Step Verification (2SV) using hardware security keys at the Windows login screen. | Learn more.

Improvement to in-room problem reporting for Google Meet hardware

Maintaining an enterprise-grade video conferencing environment requires visibility into the health of its devices. We're introducing new ways to see Google Meet hardware user-reported feedback directly in the Admin console. | Learn more.

New refinement capabilities allow custom editing with Help me write in Gmail

Users can now edit and revise their email drafts in Gmail via the prompt bar, using custom refine instructions in Help me write. Previously the refines were limited to preset options like Polish, Formalize, and Shorten. | Learn more.

Now available: group conversations with external collaborators in Google Chat

For many teams, it’s essential to be able to work in real-time with partners from outside your organization. We’re improving external collaboration in Google Chat by making it possible to create group conversations that include external users. | Learn more.

NotebookLM is now Gemini Notebook

We’re renaming NotebookLM to Gemini Notebook. While it remains a standalone product focused on being your premier research tool, the new name reflects how it will evolve to do more across the Google ecosystem. | Learn more.

Easily control the emotions and pacing of AI avatars and AI voiceovers in Google Vids

Users can now easily steer voiceover and avatar speaking in Google Vids by typing content within brackets like “[excitedly]”. | Learn more.

Expanded language support for Gemini in Google Docs

We are now expanding support for these features to 11 more languages, including Mandarin, Dutch, Malay, Hebrew, Polish, Turkish, Czech, Indonesian, Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian. These new additions join our previously supported languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, French, Korean, German, and Italian. | Learn more.

Generate higher quality AI video clips and edit any video with Gemini Omni in Vids

Users now have access to Gemini Omni directly within Google Vids. Omni provides higher quality video generation with significant improvements over previous models. Additionally, Omni’s world understanding unlocks simple video edits so you can ask Omni to tweak the video you have to get the video you need. | Learn more.

Cast yourself in AI video clips using your personal avatar with Gemini Omni in Vids

Users now have access to Gemini Omni directly within Google Vids. With Gemini Omni, you can create videos using your personal avatar to scale your presence without the studio time. Use a secure verification process to capture your likeness and then select it as a character in Omni generations within Vids. | Learn more.

New Google Meet 'Take notes for me' settings for admins and end users

To help users remember to capture notes for meetings when it’s most valuable, we’re updating the admin and end user settings that let them pre-configure AI note-taking for Google Meet. | Learn more.

The announcements above were published on the Workspace Updates blog over the last week. Please refer to the original blog posts for complete details.

Personal avatar user experience

• Secure verification: Verify and manage your personal avatar directly within your Google Account.
• Seamless integration: Easily add your personal avatar from the selector in Vids.
• Administrative oversight: Admins can manage or disable this feature through the Admin console.

A note on language and region availability

At launch, personal avatars are available in English only for users 18 years and older. They’re not available in the European Economic Area, Switzerland, or the United Kingdom. Learn more about personal avatar privacy settings.

Getting started

• Admins: This feature will be ON by default and can be disabled or enabled at the domain level. Visit the Help Center to learn more about managing personal avatars in Vids.
• End users: Visit the Help Center to learn more about using personal avatars in Vids.

Rollout pace

• Rapid Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on July 16, 2026 
• Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on August 5, 2026 

Availability

• Business: Business Starter, Standard, and Plus
• Enterprise: Enterprise Starter, Standard, and Plus
• Education: Education Plus
• Consumer: Google AI Pro and Ultra
• Other Editions: Enterprise Essentials and Enterprise Essentials Plus; Nonprofits
• Education Add-ons: Google AI Pro for Education; Teaching and Learning
• Other Add-ons: AI Expanded Access*

*Users with AI Expanded Access add-on licenses have higher limits on usage of Omni in Vids.

Resources

• Google Docs Editors Help: Create, use & manage your personal avatar with Gemini in Google Vids
• Google Docs Editors Help: Use Omni in Google Vids

Admin settings

Previously, admins could only enable or disable automatic note-taking for all meetings. Today, we’re starting to roll out a third option, which will allow admins to enable automatic note-taking only for meetings with three or more people.

Customers on Business Standard and Business Plus plans will soon see this setting turned ON by default; the setting will be OFF by default for customers on Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, and Frontline Plus plans, as well as those with the Google AI Pro for Education add-on. There will be no impact to the end user experience on any plan before September 21, 2026. If you want to change your settings, you can do so in the Admin console.

If you currently participate in the Gemini Alpha program, and previously tested this setting, it may already be ON. Please review the current state of the settings for your organization in the Admin console before September 21, 2026.

End user settings

We’re also introducing a way for end users to enable note-taking only for meetings with three or more participants. Once the “For all meetings I host with 3+ guests” option rolls out, users should revisit their settings to confirm they’re configured as desired. This option will become available no sooner than September 21; stay tuned to the Workspace Updates blog to be notified when that rollout starts.

Getting started

• Admins for Business Standard and Business Plus organizations: This new setting is ON by default. If you wish to change your settings, you should do so before September 21, 2026, to avoid any impact for end users. Visit the Help Center for more information on how to adjust these settings.
• Admins for Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Frontline Plus, and Google AI Pro for Education organizations: This new setting is OFF by default. You can adjust this setting in the Admin console once it appears, but it will not affect the end user experience before September 21, 2026. Visit the Help Center for more information on how to adjust these settings.
• Admins for organizations participating in Gemini Alpha program: Your settings may be impacted by previous configurations. Please review your settings before September 21, 2026, to ensure they’re configured correctly.
• End users on all plans: The default set by admins will go into effect for end users no sooner than September 21, 2026. Users can override this default in the Meet user settings after that date. Visit the Help Center to learn more about Meeting settings for “take notes for me”.

Rollout pace

Admin setting

• Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domains: Rolling out now, with expected completion by August 3, 2026

End user setting

• Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting no sooner than September 21, 2026*

*We’ll post an update on the Workspace Updates blog when the end user setting rollout begins.

Availability

• Business: Business Standard and Plus
• Enterprise: Enterprise Standard and Plus
• Other Editions: Frontline Plus
• Education Add-ons: Google AI Pro for Education

Resources

• Google Meet Help: Take notes for me in Google Meet
• Google Workspace Updates  Blog: New user controls for Take notes for me

Omni in Vids user experience

• Generate clips with higher quality: Generate higher quality videos with improved text rendering, physics, and realism using Google’s latest Omni Flash model.
• Edit videos by typing changes: For example, fix the color-grading, restyle the visuals in anime, or remove that New York siren in the background with a simple text instruction in Vids.

A note on language and region availability

At launch, editing non-AI videos with Omni is not available in the European Economic Area, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Texas, or Illinois.

Getting started

• Admins: This feature does not have an admin control.
• End users: Visit the Help Center to learn more about using Omni in Vids.

Rollout pace

• Rapid Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on July 16, 2026 
• Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on August 5, 2026 

Availability

• Business: Business Starter, Standard, and Plus
• Enterprise: Enterprise Starter, Standard, and Plus
• Education: Education Plus
• Consumer: Google AI Pro and Ultra
• Other Editions: Enterprise Essentials and Enterprise Essentials Plus; Nonprofits
• Education Add-ons: Google AI Pro for Education; Teaching and Learning
• Other Add-ons: AI Expanded Access*

*Users with AI Expanded Access add-on licenses have higher limits on usage of Omni in Vids.

Resources

• Google Vids Editors Help: Use AI to generate video clips

Getting started

Rollout pace

Impact

Resources

Steering suggestions in Vids scripts

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

Resources

We are now expanding support for these features to 11 more languages, including Mandarin, Dutch, Malay, Hebrew, Polish, Turkish, Czech, Indonesian, Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian. These new additions join our previously supported languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, French, Korean, German, and Italian.

Reimagined Gemini experience in Docs

With this update, Google Docs offers a centralized place to generate, write, and refine your documents with Gemini. Powered by Workspace Intelligence, Gemini leverages data across Drive, Gmail, Chat, and the web to provide personalized, context-aware assistance.

• The upgraded Help me create experience enables you to generate relevant, fully formatted first drafts that synthesize information from your files, emails, chat, and the web.
• With Help me write, simply prompt Gemini from the bottom bar or side panel to make edits across your doc, or select text to focus Gemini’s attention. Gemini’s suggested edits are only visible to you until you approve them.
• Match writing style helps maintain a consistent tone and style across your entire doc, no matter how many people are working on it.
• With Match doc format, Gemini can mirror a source document to generate content that adheres to the original's formatting (e.g., fonts and colors) and structural elements (e.g., headings and table columns).

To generate new docs from scratch, open a new doc, enter your prompt, and click submit. To edit existing docs, simply hover over the spark near the bottom of your doc and type a prompt in the bottom bar.

Getting started

• Admins: These features are available by default if Gemini for Workspace in Drive is enabled. Note that enabling Workspace Intelligence expands the range of supported use cases.
• End users: You must have Workspace smart features enabled to use these features. Visit the Help Center to learn more about creating personalized documents with Gemini in Google Docs.

Rollout pace

• Rapid Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on July 15, 2026 
• Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on August 1, 2026 

Availability

• Business: Business Standard and Plus
• Enterprise: Enterprise Standard and Plus
• Education: Education Plus
• Consumer: Google AI Pro and Ultra
• Education Add-ons: Teaching and Learning
• Other Add-ons: AI Expanded Access*; Google AI Pro for Education*

*Users with AI Expanded Access and Google AI Pro for Education add-on licenses will have higher limits on usage of Match writing style and Match document format tools.

Resources

• Google Docs Editors Help: Write & edit with Gemini in Docs
• Google Docs Editors Help: Learn how Gemini in Gmail, Calendar, Chat, Docs, Drive, Sheets, Slides, Meet & Vids protects your data

Previously, teams using Google Chat could only create 1:1 conversations with external users, or create a space in Chat with external access enabled.

With this update, it’s now possible to create group conversations with multiple external users, reducing friction and streamlining external collaboration. No additional configuration is required, and access for external users is enabled once they accept an invitation through an email notification. Group conversations with external members are labeled with a visible badge to help ensure that users are aware of the context for all conversations in Chat.

Getting started

• Admins: External group DMs share the same admin controls as external spaces. Ensure that the External spaces & group direct messages admin setting is enabled for your organization to allow users to create or join external group DMs.
• End users: If allowed by their admin, end users can add external users when they create a new group DM. External users can’t be added to existing group DMs that only have internal users. External users who are added to group DMs will receive an email invitation and must accept the invitation to participate in the group conversation.

Rollout pace

• Rapid Release domains: Rolling out now, with expected completion by July 17, 2026
• Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on July 24, 2026 

Availability

• Available to all Google Workspace customers and Workspace Individual subscribers

Resources

• Google Chat Help: External group DMs in Google Chat
• Google Workspace Admin Help: Control external Chat & spaces chat options

Whether you need to add a missing detail to the second line or include a deadline for your request, simply type the instruction and Gmail will instantly update the draft for you.

Getting started

• Admins: This feature is available by default if both Gemini for Workspace in Gmail is enabled and Workspace Intelligence access to Gmail is enabled.
• End users: This feature is available by default. Visit the Help Center article to learn more about drafting emails with Gemini in Gmail.

Rollout pace

• Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domains: Rolling out now, with expected completion by July 20, 2026

Availability

• Business: Business Starter, Standard, and Plus
• Enterprise: Enterprise Starter, Standard, and Plus
• Consumer: Google AI Plus, Pro, and Ultra
• Other Editions: Frontline Plus
• Education Add-ons: Google AI Pro for Education
• Other Add-ons: AI Expanded Access

Resources

• Gmail Help: Draft emails with Gemini in Gmail

We’ve also updated user-side feedback options to replace generic reporting with structured actionable feedback making it easier and more intuitive for room participants to report problems.

Redesigned user interface

The new feedback menu on Google Meet hardware now features responses that are tailored to the reporting context (In-Call, Out of Call, Live stream). These new feedback options collect better details, making it easier for admins to understand and troubleshoot the issue.

In-Call Feedback: Users are presented with call specific options to report a problem , like “Can’t see others” or “Poor audio or video quality.”

Out-of-Call Feedback: When filing feedback from the touchscreen landing page, users now see a new set of join-related problems, including “Can’t join Meet call” and “Can’t join Teams call.”

Livestream Feedback: Users viewing large-scale livestreams will see dedicated options to report a problem.

Admin console improvements

The Google Meet hardware section of the Admin console now features enhanced monitoring tools. Feedback is no longer proxied as a background telemetry event; it is now a primary, sortable “device information” column within the device list.

Enhancements include two new columns on the device list page, including:

• Last feedback submitted - A sortable column displaying the exact timestamp of a device’s most recent report, which can be filtered by 1, 3, 7, or 30 days. Clicking the timestamp opens a side panel containing specific feedback details.
• Feedback in the last 28 days - A cumulative count of reports filed for a specific device over a rolling 28-day period, allowing for the identification of recurring faulty devices.

The Google Meet hardware device list featuring new “Last feedback” and “Feedback in last 28 days” columns

Admins can get more information about a specific “Last feedback” by clicking on the date, a side panel will open providing the specific feedback details:

The feedback side panel on the Admin console now shows the new set of problems customers have reported

In addition, we’re introducing a new "With feedback in last 7 days" filter, which instantly prioritizes devices with recent reports and repositions the feedback columns to sit next to the device name for immediate visibility.

A new filter to glance at devices with feedback filed in the last 7 days.

Getting started

• Admins: Ensure the “Let users send feedback to Google” checkbox is selected in GMH Settings > Data Sharing > Feedback is ON  at the domain or organizational unit (OU) where the device is enrolled. Visit the Help Center to learn more.
• End users: Users can report feedback during or after a call or livestream via the “Report a problem” button. Visit the Help Center to learn more.

Rollout pace

• Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility)  starting on July 14, 2026

Availability

• Available to all Google Workspace customers with Google Meet hardware devices

Resources

• Google Meet Hardware Help: Get support for Google Meet hardware
• Google Meet Hardware Help: View & edit device information
• Google Meet Hardware Help: Monitor the health of devices
• Google Meet Hardware Help: How to report a problem from a meeting room device

Getting started

• Admins: Visit the Help Center to learn more about enforcing 2SV.
• End users: There is no end user setting for this feature.

Rollout pace

• Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility)  starting on July 13, 2026

Availability

• Available to all Google Workspace customers

Resources

• Google Workspace Admin Help: Prepare to install GCPW

You can now join video conferences on Google Meet hardware via SIP through a Pexip interop gateway. This brings universal connectivity for users to join meetings hosted on any SIP-compatible platform directly from their Meet rooms. The functionality is available for room hardware based on both Android and ChromeOS. | Learn more.

Occupancy counting now available for Google Meet on Neat room hardware

Occupancy counting is now available for Android-based Neat room hardware to help measure how meeting rooms are used. This feature brings the same occupancy counting capabilities found on ChromeOS devices to Android-based hardware. | Learn more.

Fill with Gemini in Sheets now available in 11 additional languages

We're leveraging the capabilities of the AI function in Google Sheets, Fill with Gemini eliminates the need for complex formulas, helping you easily generate text, summarize information, categorize data, or analyze sentiment at scale with generated content appearing directly in the cells you choose. | Learn more.

New calendar sharing permission level and changes to recurring event visibility

We're introducing a new calendar sharing permission level: “Make changes (see private events as free/busy)”. This allows you to grant someone edit access to your calendar while keeping the details of your private events entirely hidden. This is especially useful for leaders who assign delegates to help them manage their calendars. | Learn more.

Convert your Google Slides to videos in 7 additional languages

Google Vids already lets you convert your Slides content into Vids with AI-generated scripts, voiceovers, background music, and animations for presentations and accounts in English. We’re now expanding support to French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish. | Learn more.

Streamline identity lifecycle management in Google Workspace with new inbound SCIM support

We are excited to announce the general availability of Google Workspace inbound SCIM APIs to help IT administrators standardize identity lifecycle management. This new capability allows you to sync your Google Workspace directory in real time with any SCIM-compatible Identity Provider (IdP), HR system (HRIS), or custom application. | Learn more.

The announcements above were published on the Workspace Updates blog over the last week. Please refer to the original blog posts for complete details.

With inbound SCIM, when a Workspace end user’s account permissions are changed via their organization’s IdP, their access to Workspace data and any downstream apps, such as Gemini Enterprise, will also be updated in real time. Previously, customers would need to build custom integrations using Google directory APIs.

SCIM overview

System for Cross-domain Identity Management (SCIM) is an open protocol that synchronizes directory information between identity systems. With inbound SCIM, Google Workspace acts as a SCIM Service Provider, enabling compatible Identity Providers (IdPs) to automatically provision, update, and deactivate users and groups in real time.

Inbound SCIM offers:

• Automated lifecycle management: IT teams no longer need to manually create user accounts or update details for Workspace, saving significant time and costs.
• Seamless onboarding and day-one productivity: New employees have access to all Workspace productivity tools the moment they start, creating a frictionless onboarding experience.
• Enhanced security with instant deprovisioning: When an employee leaves your organization or changes roles, SCIM instantly pushes an update request to Workspace. This eliminates the security risks associated with orphaned accounts and makes compliance audits significantly easier.
• Simplified admin experience: Inbound SCIM offers a one-click token generation experience and admin controls to lock synced groups from your external source to prevent manual changes in Workspace that would conflict with your identity provider.

Getting started

• Admins: This feature will be available by default and can be disabled/enabled at the domain level. Visit the Help Center to learn more.
• End users: This is an admin-facing feature only.

The Manage external directories page in the Admin console showing Inbound SCIM setup

Configure a new Inbound SCIM connection with external IdP

Rollout pace

• Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting July 9, 2026

Availability

• Business: Business Starter, Standard, and Plus
• Enterprise: Enterprise Starter, Standard, and Plus

Resources

• Google Workspace Admin Help: Get started with Inbound SCIM

We’re now expanding support to French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish. 

Getting started

• Admins: There is no admin control for this feature.
• End users: There is no end user setting for this feature. Visit the Help Center to learn more about converting Google Slides into Google Vids.

Rollout pace

• Rapid Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) started on June 30, 2026
• Scheduled Release domains: Full rollout (1–3 days for feature visibility) starting on July 20, 2026

Availability

• Business: Business Starter, Standard, and Plus
• Enterprise: Enterprise Starter, Standard, and Plus
• Education: Education Plus
• Consumer: Google AI Pro and Ultra
• Other Editions: Enterprise Essentials and Enterprise Essentials Plus; Nonprofits
• Education Add-ons: Google AI Pro for Education; Teaching and Learning
• Other Add-ons: AI Expanded Access

Resources

• Google Help: Convert Google Slides into Google Vids

Previously available in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, French, Italian, and German, both Fill with Gemini and the AI function are now expanding to users in Mandarin, Dutch, Malay, Hebrew, Polish, Turkish, Czech, Indonesian, Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian.

Getting started

• Admins: Fill with Gemini is an entry point to the existing AI function. It will be hidden if the Smart features for Google Workspace setting is disabled. Visit the Help Center to learn more about managing Google Workspace smart features for your users.
• End users: You must have Workspace smart features enabled to use Fill with Gemini. Users can trigger Fill with Gemini by dragging a selection or selecting empty cells to see the prompt menu. Visit the Help Center to learn more about filling columns with Gemini.

Rollout pace 

• Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on July 7, 2026

Availability

• Business: Business Standard and Plus
• Enterprise: Enterprise Standard and Plus
• Consumer: Google AI Pro and Ultra
• Education Add-ons: Google AI Pro for Education
• AI Add-ons: AI Expanded Access*

*Starting July 15, 2026, users with AI Expanded Access licenses will have higher limits on usage of Fill with Gemini and the AI function in Sheets. 

Resources

• Google Docs Editors Help: Use the AI function in Google Sheets
• Google Admin Help: Set smart features & controls on or off for users

Delegates assigned this restricted permission level will only be able to create, delete, and edit non-private events. Private events will appear to delegates as “busy” blocks on the calendar grid, and delegates will not be able to edit or reschedule them. In addition, private events won’t show up in any search results for delegates.

Changes to visibility for recurring events

We’re also introducing changes to the way visibility settings are applied to recurring events.

• Users can no longer make changes to the visibility of a single event in a recurring series. Any changes to visibility will be applied to all events in the series.
• Existing events in a recurring series will be updated to match the strictest visibility setting of any event in that series. In other words, if one event in the series is marked private but the others are not, all events in that series will be changed to private.

Getting started

• Admins: There is no admin control for this feature.
• End users: Users can grant delegates this new permission level in their Calendar settings. Visit the Help Center to learn more about sharing your calendar.

Rollout pace

• Rapid and Scheduled Release domains: Extended rollout (potentially longer than 15 days for feature visibility) starting on July 7, 2026

Availability

• Available to all Google Workspace customers, Workspace Individual subscribers, and users with personal Google accounts

Resources

• Google Calendar Help: Share your calendar

Understanding room occupancy helps organizations optimize real estate and room design based on user needs. For instance, organizations can track if rooms with older video hardware are being avoided in favor of rooms equipped with better tracking cameras and audio bars.

Admins can review occupancy data in the Google Admin console and optionally download it as a spreadsheet. This feature does not collect or store any personally identifiable information (PII). Because occupancy detection processes data locally on the device, the camera LED indicator may remain off during counting depending on the hardware vendor. Refer to vendor documentation for device-specific information.

Review room booking and occupancy in the Admin console

Getting started

• Admins: This feature will be off by default and can be enabled at the domain, organizational unit (OU), or group level. Visit the Help Center to learn more about turning on occupancy detection.
• End users: There is no end-user setting for this feature.

Rollout pace

• Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domains: Extended rollout (potentially longer than 15 days for feature visibility) started on July 6, 2026

Availability

• Available to all Google Workspace customers with Google Meet on Neat AOSP hardware devices. 

Resources

• Google Workspace Admin Help: Turn on occupancy detection
• Google Workspace Admin Help: Track room and device usage with Meet hardware

The SIP functionality for Meet hardware enables critical in-meeting interactions, such as DTMF (Dual-Tone Multi-Frequency) capabilities that allow users to navigate meeting IVRs (interactive voice response systems), e.g., "Press 1 to raise your hand" and entering numeric meeting passcodes.

Distinct administrator settings are provided for managing SIP dial-out functionality separately from other Pexip-based integrations.

Join SIP calls with a single touch from the room agenda

SIP interoperability setting for administrators

Getting started

• Admins: This feature will be off by default and can be disabled or enabled at the domain, OU, or group level. Visit the Help Center to learn more.
• End users: There is no end user setting for this feature.

Rollout pace

• Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on July 6, 2026

Availability

• Available to all Google Workspace customers with Google Meet hardware devices*

*Functionality requires a separate Pexip subscription

Resources

• Google Workspace Admin Help: Allow Meet hardware to join third-party video conferencing services
• Google Meet Hardware Help: Meet interoperability FAQ

In April 2026, we updated Meet to improve video quality on high-resolution displays. We’re now updating the way the Admin console setting that limits video bandwidth works to reduce data usage and improve call quality. | Learn more.

Educators and students can now share Gemini Canvas creations directly to Google Classroom

Educators and students of all ages can now seamlessly attach Gemini Canvas artifacts, like websites, quizzes, interactive games, infographics, and more, to Google Classroom assignments and posts. | Learn more.

Assign mobile device management admin privileges based on organizational unit

We’re giving admins more granular control over how mobile device management privileges are delegated. Specifically, admins can be assigned privileges for specific organizational units (OUs), adding another layer of security by scoping access only to necessary OUs. | Learn more.

Data regions support for the Gemini app now available

The Gemini app adheres to your organization’s data regionalization requirements. As with Google Workspace, admins have the flexibility to configure controls for EU storage and processing, US storage and processing, or both, including granular settings down to the organizational unit (OU) level. | Learn more.

Create fully native and editable presentations with Gemini in Google Slides

You can now create a full, multi-slide presentation using Gemini in Google Slides. With a single prompt, you can ground the presentation in existing content from Google Drive, match the style of another presentation, and build fully editable slides, allowing you to make any necessary adjustments. | Learn more.

Ask Gemini in Drive now available on mobile

In April, we announced the general availability of Ask Gemini in Drive on the web. We’re now bringing this feature to the Drive Android and iOS apps. | Learn more.

Work with delegated Gmail accounts from mobile devices

Previously, users could only work with delegated Gmail accounts through the web interface. We are updating the Gmail app for iOS and Android to allow delegates to read, manage, and compose emails on behalf of a delegator directly from their mobile devices. | Learn more.

AI Overviews in Drive now available on mobile

In April, we announced the general availability for Drive AI Overviews in Drive on the web. We’re now bringing this feature to the Drive Android and iOS apps. | Learn more.

Import 3D bar charts into Google Sheets

Google Sheets now fully supports the import of 3D bar charts. Previously, when users imported files containing 3D bar charts into Sheets, they would be displayed as 2D bar charts. With this update, importing these types of files, including from Microsoft Excel, will yield a more seamless experience. | Learn more.

The announcements above were published on the Workspace Updates blog over the last week. Please refer to the original blog posts for complete details.

3D bar chart imported into Google Sheets

Getting started

• Admins: There is no admin control for this feature.
• End users: Visit the Help Center to learn more about adding and editing a chart in Google Sheets.

Rollout pace

• Rapid Release domains: Available now
• Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on July 13, 2026

Availability

• Available to all Google Workspace customers and users with personal Google accounts

Resources

• Google Docs Editors Help: Add & edit a chart or graph

Instead of searching through endless files and opening dozens of tabs to find the information you need, you can now get instant answers right at the top of your search results. Gemini does the heavy lifting for you, scanning your documents to provide clear, reliable summaries.

Here is how it helps you work smarter:

• See the big picture: Get a quick summary of information pulled from multiple files without needing to open each one.
• Ask naturally: There’s no need to use complicated search tricks. Just ask a question as you would to a colleague, like "What’s in our Spring 2026 catalog?"
• Get the right answer: Gemini automatically understands what you’re looking for, whether it’s a quick fact, a project summary, or a list of specific documents, and adjusts its response to match.
• Dig deeper with ease: If you need more information, you can go from a quick summary to a deeper conversation with Ask Gemini in just one click.
• Control your AI Overviews scope: Use AI Overview search settings to choose which Google Workspace apps Gemini uses to find files and generate AI Overviews.

This feature will roll out in English and an additional 28 languages (the same as those supposed for Gemini in Drive side panel) over the next several weeks.

Getting started

• Admins: This feature is available by default if Gemini for Workspace in Drive is enabled.
• End users: You must have Workspace smart features enabled to use AI Overviews in Drive. Visit the Help Center to learn more about getting answers directly in Drive search.

Rollout pace

• Rapid and Scheduled Release domains: Extended rollout (potentially longer than 15 days for feature visibility) started on June 26, 2026

Availability

• Business: Business Standard and Plus
• Enterprise: Enterprise Standard and Plus
• Consumer: Google AI Pro and Ultra
• AI Add-ons: Google AI Pro for Education

Resources

• Google Help: Search & retrieve your files in Drive with Gemini

Ask Gemini in Drive offers you a dedicated, immersive workspace designed for deep focus. You can now engage in high-context, multi-turn conversations to efficiently explore and understand content across Drive, other Workspace apps, and the web.

Key features include:

• Dedicated conversations: Engage in focused discussions about specific sets of files and folders. By grounding your questions in the relevant content, you get more precise, actionable answers.
• Persistent conversation history: Easily pick up where you left off. Your past chats are saved, allowing you to quickly revisit previous insights about specific folders or projects without starting over.
• Secure and compliant: Ask Gemini in Drive is built directly into the Drive architecture, it never copies or replicates your files. It honors your existing data protection and security controls, including access permissions, DLP policies, and IRM, ensuring Gemini only accesses content you are authorized to see.

This feature will roll out in English and an additional 28 languages over the next several weeks.

Getting started

• Admins: This feature is available by default if Gemini for Workspace in Drive is enabled.
• End users: You must have Workspace smart features enabled to use Ask Gemini in Drive. Visit the Help Center to learn more about Ask Gemini in Drive.

Rollout pace

• Rapid and Scheduled Release domains: Extended rollout (potentially longer than 15 days for feature visibility) started on June 26, 2026

Availability

• Business: Business Standard and Plus
• Enterprise: Enterprise Standard and Plus
• Consumer: Google AI Pro and Ultra
• AI Add-ons: Google AI Pro for Education

Resources

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

Resources

Try the following to create more relevant, compelling presentations in less time:

• Add a prompt: In the Slides side panel, add a prompt to generate a presentation.
• Ground it in your content: Add as many reference files directly from Drive as you need to provide context.
• Stay on-brand: Attach an existing deck to use as a style reference to ensure your presentation matches your desired look and feel.
• Refine the plan for your presentation: Answer any follow-up questions to refine the presentation’s tone, style, content, or audience. You will also have the chance to edit or approve the presentation outline before the actual slides are created.

Note: At launch, this feature will be supported in English only.

Getting started

• Admins: There is no admin control for this feature.
• End users: Visit the Help Center to learn more about generating a presentation with Gemini.

Note: Through at least August 1, 2026, Workspace customers will get promotional access to higher limits for creating multi-slide presentations using Gemini in Google Slides, allowing users to experiment with this feature. Users will see a notification when they use this feature to inform them of the limited higher promotional access period. Per-user usage limits will apply after that date; we’ll provide more information in the Help Center in advance of updated usage limits going into effect.

Rollout pace

• Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domains: Extended rollout (potentially longer than 15 days for feature visibility) started on June 29, 2026

Availability

• Business: Business Standard and Plus
• Enterprise: Enterprise Standard and Plus
• Consumer: Google AI Pro and Ultra
• Education Add-ons: Google AI Pro for Education
• Other Add-ons: AI Expanded Access*

*Once promotional limits are no longer in effect, users with AI Expanded Access add-on licenses will have higher limits on usage of Gemini in Slides.

Resources

• Google Slides Help: Generate presentations with Gemini in Google Slides
• Google Workspace Updates Blog: Reimagining content creation with Gemini in Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Drive

Example experience for an admin with OU-level permissions

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

Resources

By removing the friction of exporting or linking external files, this feature helps teachers diversify their lesson materials and enables students to share creative outputs more efficiently. The integration ensures that rich, interactive media is easily accessible to everyone in the class, supporting a more engaging and dynamic digital learning environment.

Getting started

• Admins:
• The ability to share Gemini Canvas artifacts will be ON by default and can be managed via a new Admin console setting. Additionally, sharing is governed by your organization’s existing Drive sharing policies. If Drive content is set to be shareable outside the organization, your Gemini assets will be as well. Visit the Help Center to learn more.
• To share Gemini Canvas artifacts to Google Classroom, students and educators must also be in a group or OU with Gemini set to On. Visit the Help Center to learn more about turning Gemini on or off for users.
• End users: There is no end user setting for this feature. If enabled by your admin, you can share your Gemini canvases and media to Classroom, select Share > Share to Classroom > select the class and/or assignment you want to share it with. Visit the Help Center to learn more about Gemini.

Rollout pace

• Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domains: Available now

Availability

• Education: Education Fundamentals, Standard, and Plus

Resources

• Google Workspace Updates Blog: Share chats, canvases, and generated media from the Gemini app securely via Google Drive
• Google Workspace Admin Help: Turn conversation sharing on or off
• Google Workspace Admin Help: Turn the Gemini app on or off

Previously, the ‘Limit video bandwidth’ setting only limited video bandwidth on the uplink; it now limits bandwidth on the downlink as well. In addition, we’re improving quality for two-person calls by increasing the uplink bandwidth usage in this scenario.

Updated setting for Meet default video quality

Getting started

• Admins: Your existing settings will remain applied.  Visit the Help Center to learn more about configuring default video quality.
• End users: There is no end user setting for this feature.

Rollout pace

• Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domains: Extended rollout (potentially longer than 15 days for feature visibility) starting on June 29, 2026

Availability

• Available to all Google Workspace customers

Resources

• Google Admin Help: Manage Meet settings (for admins)
• Google Admin Help: Configuring default video quality

Enhanced security monitoring with expanded Admin password reset alerts

Join Google Meet calls from Safari on iOS devices

Google Apps Script is now a Google Workspace core service with enterprise-grade data protection

Connect to Google Meet hardware with room codes now in Early Preview

Updates to Gemini in Google Classroom

Stricter classifications for Google Groups to enhance data security and privacy

Read Along in Google Classroom is now available to all education users to support foundational literacy

Streamline your data backups with incremental exports for Google Workspace

• Frequent incremental backups - supplementing the baseline with frequent incremental backups, such as backing up data from the "last x days" every "y days"
• Capture data from the last 5 days, running every 3 days
• Capture data from the last 7 days, running every 5 days

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

Resources

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

Resources

• Create a presentation
• Create an interactive activity
• Convert a file to Google slides

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

Resources

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

Resources

More about Apps Script

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

Resources

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

Resources

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

Resources

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

Resources

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

Resources

Organization filter

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

Resources

Important notes

Getting started

• Admins: Access to the Classroom app in Gemini will be ON by default for all Education domains and can be disabled at the OU or group level. For all other domains, access will be OFF by default and can be enabled at the OU or group level. Access can be turned on or off with a new Classroom app setting in the Gemini section of the Admin console. Visit the Help Center to learn more about turning Google apps in Gemini on or off for your organization.

• End users: Your admin configuration will determine if you can use the Classroom app in Gemini. Access to the Classroom app in Gemini will be ON by default and can be disabled at the end user level in the connected apps section of the Gemini app settings. Visit the Help Center to learn more about using apps connected to Gemini.

Rollout pace

Availability

Resources

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

Resources

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

Resources

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

Resources

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

Resources

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

Resources

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

Resources

Convert rubric files and images into Google Classroom rubrics with help from Gemini

Introducing the Workspace Policy API mutate endpoints for DLP

Google Meet now supports sending 1080p HD video from ChromeOS meeting room hardware

Google Vault now supports retention rules and litigation holds for Gemini app

• Default retention rules: Set default retention rules for the Gemini app for a finite or indefinite retention period.
• Custom retention rules: Create custom retention rules for the Gemini app by organizational unit (OU) or the entire domain for a finite or indefinite retention period.
• Litigation holds: Place holds on the Gemini app data for a specific OU or a list of users.

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

Resources

Notification in comments

Notification in file sharing email

Image of "External" badge displayed in Google Docs

Getting started

• Admins: This feature is ON by default and can be disabled at the domain and organizational level. Visit the Help Center to learn more about turning Out-of-Domain Warnings on or off for your organization.
• End users: This feature is ON by default. There is no end-user setting for this feature. Visit the Help Center to learn more about sharing files from Google Drive.

Image of the Google Workspace Admin console, Sharing settings, showing the "Highlight external files" option enabled

Rollout pace

Availability

Resources

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

Resources

Getting started

Availability

Resources

• Easy, SQL-free configuration: A user-friendly side panel guides you through configuring your anomaly detection analysis without writing a single line of SQL.
• Clear, built-in formatting: Results are cleanly rendered with new columns for is_anomaly (a boolean indicator) and lower_bound/upper_bound intervals to help you quickly sort, filter, and interpret the findings. 
• Customizable thresholds: Take control of your analysis by setting a specific time period, anomaly probability threshold (defaulting to 0.95), and filtering input data
• Automated refresh ability: Just like other Connected Sheets objects, your anomaly detection extracts can be scheduled to refresh automatically, ensuring your insights are always current.

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

Resources

An example of the audit log and log details for a DBSC event in the admin console

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

Resources

Getting started

• Admins: This feature will be ON by default and can be managed via a new Admin console setting. Additionally, sharing is governed by your organization’s existing Drive sharing policies. If Drive content is set to be shareable outside the organization, your Gemini assets will be as well. Visit the Help Center to learn more.

• End users: If enabled by your admin, you can share your Gemini conversations, canvases, and media from the web interface using the standard Drive sharing menu.

Rollout pace

Availability

Resources

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

Resources

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

Resources

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

Resources

Simplify decision-making with Polly, now available for Google Chat

Improvements to Out-of-Domain file-level warnings

Keep your sources up to date with automatic Drive syncing in NotebookLM

Gemini LTI Update: Include your LMS sources when using NotebookLM in Powerschool Schoology

More granular admin controls for Workspace Studio steps and starters

Easily identify data irregularities with anomaly detection in Connected Sheets

Ask Gemini in Google Meet is becoming more easily accessible on web

Prevent account takeovers with Device Bound Session Credentials (DBSC), now generally available in the Chrome browser for Windows

Share chats, canvases, and generated media from the Gemini app securely via Google Drive

Google Chat external interoperability with Microsoft Teams via NextPlane OpenHub is now available 

Available in beta: Convert your client-side encrypted Slides after a Vault or Takeout export

Keep track of student progress with learning standards and skills in Google Classroom

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

Resources

Getting started

• Admins: This feature will be OFF by default and can be enabled at the OU level. Admins can leverage iOS AppConfig through their MDM provider to enforce these restrictions for each Workspace app. Visit the Help Center to learn more about preventing accidental data leaks on iOS devices.

• End users: There is no end-user setting for this feature.

Rollout pace

Availability

Resources

Getting started

• Admins: When configuring DLP rules in the admin console, admins can locate the new content conditions of file extension, file name, and file type under content conditions. Admins can also select the option of proximity matching to set a maximum distance between two pieces of matched texts. Visit the Help Center to learn more.
• End users: There is no end user setting for this feature.

Content conditions for DLP in the Admin console to configure policies for sensitive file attachments

Rollout pace

Availability

Resources

Getting started

• Admins: The feature will be OFF by default and can be enabled at the organizational unit (OU) or group level. Visit the Help Center to learn more about DLP for Calendar.
• End users: There is no end user setting for this feature.

DLP settings in the admin console to configure policies for sensitive data, including actions and alerts when creating Calendar events

An end user is prompted with a message asking them to remove sensitive information

Rollout pace

Availability

Resources

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

Resources

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

Resources

Introducing the ability to loop over a list of items in Workspace Studio

Enhanced data protection for managed third-party apps

Quickly scan multiple pages in Google Drive on Android

New data loss prevention capabilities for file attachments and proximity conditions are generally available 

Data loss prevention policies for Google Calendar now available in GA

Gmail as a source in Ask Gemini in Drive now generally available

When checked, "Require all approvers to review the same content" resets pending approvals if the file content changes. This is the default behavior.

When unchecked, changes to the file content don't reset pending approvals.

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

Resources

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

Resources

Summary of capabilities supported by mutate endpoints for DLP

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

Resources

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

Resources

The post 30+ CSS Cards appeared first at webdeasy.de.

The post WordPress CI/CD: Ultimative CI/CD Pipeline für WordPress appeared first at webdeasy.de.

The post WordPress CI/CD: Ultimative CI/CD Pipeline für WordPress appeared first at webdeasy.de.

The post How to fix „A JavaScript error occured in the main process“ (VSCode, Discord, …) appeared first at webdeasy.de.

The post GitHub Container Registry: So pushst du Docker Images zu GitHub appeared first at webdeasy.de.

The post Rest API Testing: So testest du Rest APIs richtig! appeared first at webdeasy.de.

The post FRITZ!Box DynDNS einrichten: So geht’s appeared first at webdeasy.de.

The post FRITZ!Box VPN einrichten: So funktioniert es appeared first at webdeasy.de.

The post 30 CSS Background Pattern appeared first at webdeasy.de.

The post Docker vs. VM (virtuelle Maschine): Das sind die Unterschiede appeared first at webdeasy.de.

The post Docker Permission Denied – So behebst du den Fehler appeared first at webdeasy.de.

The post GitHub Actions: Tutorial für Einsteiger – Basics & Beispiele appeared first at webdeasy.de.

The post How to Clear Your Google Search Browsing History in 3 Easy Steps appeared first on AddictiveTips.

The post Top Apps and Software for Budding Musicians appeared first on CSHAWK.

The post Top 9 Tips to Keep Yourself Safe When Gaming Online appeared first on CSHAWK.

The post Docker „Permission Denied“ Fehler beheben appeared first at webdeasy.de.

The post Pros And Cons Of Getting A Tax Extension for Your Fintech Business appeared first on CSHAWK.

The post TOP 20 VSCode Extensions, um deine Produktivität zu steigern! appeared first at webdeasy.de.

The post ChatGPT und KI in der Softwareentwicklung (Best Practices) appeared first at webdeasy.de.

The post 30 hübsche CSS Background Patterns (Collection) appeared first at webdeasy.de.

The post Will Roblox Work on the Chromebook? appeared first on CSHAWK.

The post Was ist CI/CD? Definitionen, Konzepte und CI/CD Tools im Überblick appeared first at webdeasy.de.

The post Docker vs. virtuelle Maschinen (VM): Das sind die Unterschiede appeared first at webdeasy.de.

The post What is Minecraft PE [Pocket Edition] ? Different Than Normal? appeared first on CSHAWK.

The post Minecraft Horror: How Minecraft Secretly is a Horror Game? appeared first on CSHAWK.

The post How to Use Shaders in Minecraft PE? [Updated] appeared first on CSHAWK.

The post Why is Minecraft’s Apk Not Working? 10 Reasons WITH Fixes! appeared first on CSHAWK.

The post Where Are Apk Files Stored on Android? [Updated] appeared first on CSHAWK.

The post Minecraft’s Best Version: What’s the Best of Minecraft? appeared first on CSHAWK.

The post Will Minecraft Legend Ever Be Free? appeared first on CSHAWK.

The post Can Minecraft Java be Played With Xbox? appeared first on CSHAWK.

The post PHP MySQL Datenbank Klasse (einfach & sicher) appeared first at webdeasy.de.

The post Top 5 Games Which Became Most Popular in 2023 – Detailed Review! appeared first on CSHAWK.

The post Docker Init Befehl: Docker Projekte automatisch erstellen appeared first at webdeasy.de.

JavaScript is a primary driver for interactivity across the web, but if it's not used with care, interactions can feel sluggish, and lead users to perceive your website to be non-responsive or altogether broken. Thankfully, the Interaction to Next Paint (INP) metric was created to address this specific user experience problem.

INP measures all interactions made with a page during its lifecycle, and reports a single value that is representative of a website's speed in responding to user inputs. Simply put, if a page's INP is at or below the good threshold, all interactions made with a page can be said to be reliably fast.

redBus, a bus booking and ticketing website based in India, undertook a substantial effort to improve their website's INP, even during the time when it was still considered an experimental metric. As a result of their efforts, they were able to increase sales by 7%, illustrating once again the relationship between web performance and business health. Here's what redBus did to improve their website's INP.

Top goals #

When redBus set out to optimize their website's INP, they had three goals in mind:

1. Provide a better user experience for users by focusing on interaction latency regardless of network speed and device capabilities.
2. Optimize their website to keep interactions as fast as possible.
3. Ensure that responses from their API were as light as possible to ensure fast data transfer to the front end.

The journey #

redBus categorized interaction latency in two ways:

1. Interaction latency caused by blocking JavaScript on the client. When interactions use excessive JavaScript that blocks the main thread, rendering is delayed, and this affects a page's INP.
2. Network latency caused by API calls. While network activity is not something that INP measures, an interaction reliant on a call to a remote API can feel sluggish on slower networks, or if requests result in large responses.

redBus was initially quite confident that the INP for their website would be good, but the Real User Monitoring (RUM) data for this metric at the 95th percentile told a different story.

How redBus measured INP #

redBus relied on the web-vitals JavaScript library built by Google to track not just INP, but all important user experience metrics for all pages across their website. In addition to the web-vitals JavaScript library, redBus used ELK to analyze INP data that was collected on the front end.

However, how you track your website's INP in the field may be quite different from how redBus approached the problem. We highly recommend that you read about how to find slow interactions in the field to learn how to best to track INP for your websites, and subsequently how to reproduce them in the lab before you begin optimizing interactions.

Once redBus had a system in place for tracking INP, they were able to analyze the data in order to gain a better understanding of where slow interactivity was present.

Use cases #

When users search for fares on the redBus website, they can change the date on the search page to filter selected fares for the desired destination. The interaction to change the date on this page was slow, and was a cause of poor INP.

Additionally, when a user scrolls through fares, additional fares are lazy-loaded from the API. Though scrolling itself isn't factored in how INP is measured, the scroll event listener itself schedules a lot of work that must run on the main thread. This work was causing contention on the main thread that increased interaction latency, leading to poor INP on the search page.

How redBus optimized INP for the search page #

To improve the search page's INP, redBus made several optimizations:

• The scroll event handler was debounced in order to reduce the amount of times the event callback would fire in a given period. By lowering the frequency in which scroll event callback ran, the main thread was able to respond more quickly to user interactions on the search page.
• The resulting rendering work was prioritized by using a requestAnimationFrame callback. requestAnimationFrame tells the browser that the work in the callback must be done before the next frame.

Additionally, the following further optimizations were made to the search results page:

• New batches of results were fetched on the second to last card on the search results page in order to improve the user experience and visual performance by triggering lazy loading earlier.
• Fewer results were fetched on each network call during lazy loading. By reducing fetches from 30 to 10 results, a reduction in INP ranges at 870 to 900 down to 350 to 370 were observed.

While these changes significantly improved the INP of the search page, there was still the problem where the change event on the search page's input fields would call an expensive reducer function to update the user interface. This resulted in unnecessary rerendering of the user interface, which affected the page's INP.

To optimize this interaction, redBus managed the state of input components locally and synced it with the Redux store only when an input's blur event was fired. This change reduced the number of rerenders and eliminated unwanted rerendering of the user interface by calling the reducer less frequently.

With this change, the page's INP improved by 72%, resulting in a faster and smoother user experience that users are more likely to engage with.

Business impact #

The relationship between business health and page performance is well-known. Though INP is a relatively new metric compared to other Core Web Vitals, redBus observed better business outcomes by focusing on improving this important user-centric performance metric. The result was a 7% overall increase in sales.

In short, INP helped to paint a picture of runtime performance issues on the redBus website. With the knowledge that there were improvements to be made, redBus was able to observe the problem, reproduce it, and use that crucial information to make optimizations that were beneficial to redBus and its business.

The fuzzy beginning #

When Google initially introduced INP as an experimental metric with the potential to evolve into one of the Core Web Vitals metrics, the Economic Times team took up the challenge to fix it before it graduates into one, since providing a world class user experience is crucial to our core business values.

INP has been one of the most difficult metrics to solve thus far. In the beginning, it was unclear on how to measure INP effectively. What made it more difficult was the lack of community support—including most Real User Monitoring (RUM) providers not supporting it yet. However, we had Google RUM tools like Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX), the web-vitals JavaScript library, and others supporting it, which gave us a sense of where we stood while we were evaluating the path ahead. Our INP was close to 1,000 milliseconds at the origin level when we started.

One thing that emerged while fixing INP in the field was that one of the lab metrics to target could be Total Blocking Time (TBT). TBT was already well documented and supported by the community. Despite already meeting the thresholds for Core Web Vitals, however, we weren't doing as well on the TBT front, as it was over 3 seconds when we began.

What is TBT, and what steps did we take to improve it? #

TBT is a lab metric that measures the responsiveness of a web page to user input during page load. Any task that takes more than 50 milliseconds to execute is considered a long task, and the time after the 50 millisecond threshold is known as the blocking time.

TBT is calculated by taking the sum of the blocking time of all long tasks during page load. For example, if there are two long tasks during load, the blocking time is determined as follows:

• Task A takes 80 milliseconds (30 milliseconds more than 50 milliseconds).
• Task B takes 100 milliseconds (50 milliseconds more than 50 milliseconds).

The page's TBT will be: 80 milliseconds (30 + 50). The lower the TBT, the better, and TBT also correlates well with INP.

Here’s a quick lab comparison of our TBT before and after taking steps to improve it:

Minimize main thread work #

The browser’s main thread handles everything from parsing HTML, building the DOM, to parsing CSS and applying styles, as well as evaluating and executing JavaScript. The main thread also handles user interactions—that is, click, tap, and keypresses. If the main thread is occupied with doing other work, it may not respond to user inputs efficiently, and may lead to a janky user experience.

This was the most difficult task for us, since we have our own algorithms to detect user identity for serving ads based on subscription status and third party scripts for A/B testing, analytics, and more.

We took small steps at first, such as de-prioritizing loading of less critical business assets. Second, we used requestIdleCallback for non-critical work, which can help to reduce TBT.

if ('requestIdleCallback' in window) {
  this.requestIdleCallbackId = requestIdleCallback(fetchMarketsData.bind(this), {timeout: 3000});
} else {
  fetchMarketsData(); // Fallback in case requestIdleCallback is not supported
}

Specifying a timeout is recommended when using requestIdleCallback, since it makes sure that if the given time is elapsed and the callback is not already been called, it executes the callback immediately after the timeout.

Minimize script evaluation time #

We also lazy loaded third party libraries using Loadable components. We also removed unused JavaScript and CSS by profiling the page with the coverage tool in Chrome DevTools. It helped us to identify areas where tree shaking was needed to ship less code during page load, and therefore reduce the initial bundle size of the application.

Reduce DOM size #

Per Lighthouse, large DOM sizes increase memory usage, causes longer style recalculations, and produces costly layout reflows.

We reduced the number of DOM nodes in two ways:

• First, we rendered our menu items at the user’s request (on click). It decreased the DOM size by around 1,200 nodes.
• Second, we lazy loaded less important widgets.

Because of all these efforts, we reduced TBT significantly, and our INP was reduced accordingly by almost 50%:

At this point, we nearly ran out of easy wins to further reduce TBT (and INP by proxy), but we knew we had a lot of room for improvement. This is when we decided to upgrade our custom-built UI boilerplate to the latest version of React along with Next.js to make better use of hooks to avoid unnecessary re-rendering of components.

Due to more frequent updates and comparatively lesser traffic as compared to the other portions of the website, we began to migrate our topic pages to Next.js. We also used PartyTown for offloading additional heavy main thread work to web workers, along with techniques like requestIdleCallBack for deferring non-critical tasks.

How has improving INP helped The Economic Times? #

Current TBT and INP on origin #

At the time of publishing this post, the TBT for our origin was 120 milliseconds, down from 3,260 milliseconds when we began our optimization efforts. Similarly, the INP for our origin was 257 milliseconds after our optimization efforts, down from over 1,000 milliseconds.

INP CrUX trend #

The traffic received on topic pages represents a significantly smaller portion of overall traffic. Hence, it was an ideal place for experimentation. The CrUX results along with the business outcomes were very encouraging, and led us to expand our efforts across the entire website to reap further benefits.

Akamai mPulse TBT Analysis #

We use Akamai mPulse as our RUM solution, which measures TBT in the field. We observed a consistent decrease in TBT, clearly mapping to the outcomes of our efforts to reduce INP. As can be seen in the screenshot below, TBT values eventually dropped from approximately 5 seconds in to around 200 milliseconds in the field.

Business outcome #

Overall, our efforts to bring down TBT by 30 times, along with migrating to Next.js helped us reduce INP nearly by 4 times, which eventually led to a 50% decrease in bounce rate and 43% uplift in pageviews on topic pages.

Conclusion #

To summarize, INP extensively helped to determine runtime performance issues on parts of the Economic Times website. It has proven to be one of the most effective metrics to positively impact business outcomes. Due to the very encouraging numbers we've observed as the result of this effort, we are motivated to scale our optimization efforts to other areas of our website and reap additional benefits.

The post HP Cloud Stories: Power Of Cloud Computing Unveiled! appeared first on CSHAWK.

The post Building Your Own PC: A Step-by-Step Guide to Custom PC Building appeared first on CSHAWK.

The post CSHAWK Acquired Desklitter.com: A Desk Organizer Store appeared first on CSHAWK.

The post Die Macht der KI: Wie dich ChatGPT als Developer unterstützen kann appeared first at webdeasy.de.

The post Why Torrent Is Not Downloading? Fix Torrent Not Downloading! appeared first on CSHAWK.

The post Roblox VS Fortnite | Find Out Who Wins This Fight! appeared first on CSHAWK.

The post What Roblox Game Has The Most Visits? appeared first on CSHAWK.

The post Can Roblox IP Ban? Full Decoded Information! appeared first on CSHAWK.

The post Roblox vs Minecraft : Which is Better And Why? [2023] appeared first on CSHAWK.

3D development in the browser #

After releasing Slow Roads, I saw a recurring comment in the feedback: "I didn't know this was possible in the browser". If you share this sentiment, you're certainly not a minority; according to the 2022 State of JS survey, some 80% of developers have yet to experiment with WebGL. To me, it feels something of a shame that so much potential might be missed, especially when it comes to browser-based gaming. With Slow Roads I hope to bring WebGL further into the limelight, and perhaps reduce the number of developers who balk at the phrase "high-performance JavaScript game engine".

WebGL may seem mysterious and complex for many, but in recent years its development ecosystems have greatly matured into highly capable and convenient tools and libraries. It's now easier than ever for front-end developers to incorporate 3D UX into their work, even without prior experience in computer graphics. Three.js, the leading WebGL library, serves as the foundation for many expansions, including react-three-fiber which brings 3D components into the React framework. There are now also comprehensive web-based game editors such as Babylon.js or PlayCanvas which offer a familiar interface and integrated toolchains.

Despite the remarkable utility of these libraries, however, ambitious projects are eventually bound by technical limitations. Skeptics to the idea of browser-based gaming might highlight that JavaScript is single-threaded and resource-constrained. But navigating these limitations unlocks the hidden value: no other platform offers the same instant accessibility and mass compatibility enabled by the browser. Users on any browser-capable system can begin playing in one click, with no need to install applications and no need to sign in to services. Not to mention that developers enjoy the elegant convenience of having robust front-end frameworks available for building UI, or handling networking for multiplayer modes. These values, in my opinion, are what make the browser such an excellent platform for both players and developers alike—and, as demonstrated by Slow Roads, the technical limitations might often be reducible to a design problem.

Achieving smooth performance in Slow Roads #

Since the core elements of Slow Roads involve high-speed motion and expensive scenery generation, the need for smooth performance underlined my every design decision. My main strategy was to start with a pared-down gameplay design that allowed for contextual short-cuts to be taken within the engine's architecture. On the downside this means trading off some nice-to-have features in the pursuit of minimalism, but results in a bespoke, hyper-optimized system that plays nicely across different browsers and devices.

Here follows a breakdown of the key components that keep Slow Roads lean.

Shaping the environment engine around the gameplay #

As the key component of the game, the environment generation engine is unavoidably expensive, justifiably taking the greatest proportion of the budgets for memory and compute. The trick used here is in scheduling and distributing the heavy computation over a period of time, so as not to interrupt the framerate with performance spikes.

The environment is composed of tiles of geometry, differing in size and resolution (categorized as "levels of detail" or LoDs) depending on how close they will appear to the camera. In typical games with a free-roaming camera, different LoDs must be constantly loaded and unloaded to detail the player's surroundings wherever they may choose to go. This can be an expensive and wasteful operation, especially when the environment itself is dynamically generated. Fortunately, this convention can be entirely subverted in Slow Roads thanks to the contextual expectation that the user should stay on the road. Instead, high-detail geometry can be reserved for the narrow corridor directly flanking the route.

The midline of the road itself is generated far ahead of the player's arrival, allowing for accurate prediction of exactly when and where the environment detail will be needed. The result is a lean system that can proactively schedule expensive work, generating just the minimum needed at each point in time, and with no wasted effort on details that won't be seen. This technique is only possible because the road is a single, non-branching path—a good example of making gameplay trade-offs that accommodate architectural short-cuts.

Being picky with the laws of physics #

Second to the computational demand of the environment engine is the physics simulation. Slow Roads uses a custom, minimal physics engine which takes every short-cut available.

The major saving here is to avoid simulating too many objects in the first place—leaning into the minimal, zen context by discounting things like dynamic collisions and destructible objects. The assumption that the vehicle will stay on the road means that collisions with off-road objects can reasonably be ignored. Additionally, the encoding of the road as a sparse midline enables elegant tricks for fast collision detection with the road surface and guard rails, all based on a distance check to the road's center. Off-road driving then becomes more expensive, but this is another example of a fair trade-off suited to the context of the gameplay.

Managing the memory footprint #

As another browser-restrained resource, it's important to manage memory with care—despite the fact JavaScript is garbage-collected. It can be easy to overlook, but declaring even small amounts of new memory within a game loop can snowball into significant issues when running at 60Hz. Besides eating up the user's resources in a context where they're likely multitasking, large garbage collections can take several frames to complete, causing noticeable stutters. To avoid this, loop memory can be pre-allocated in class variables at initialisation and recycled in each frame.

It's also highly important that heavier data structures, such as geometries and their associated data buffers, are managed economically. In an infinitely-generated game like Slow Roads, most of the geometry exists on a sort of treadmill - once an old piece falls behind into the distance, its data structures can be stored and recycled again for an upcoming piece of the world, a design pattern known as object pooling.

These practices help to prioritize lean execution, with the sacrifice of some code simplicity. In high-performance contexts it's important to be mindful of how convenience features sometimes borrow from the client for the benefit of the developer. For example, methods like Object.keys() or Array.map() are incredibly handy, but it's easy to overlook that each creates a new array for their return value. Understanding the inner workings of such black-boxes can help to tighten up your code and avoid sneaky performance hits.

Reducing load time with procedurally-generated assets #

While runtime performance should be the primary concern for game developers, the usual axioms concerning initial web page load time still hold true. Users may be more forgiving when knowingly accessing heavy content, but long load times can still be detrimental to the experience, if not user retention. Games often require large assets in the form of textures, sounds, and 3D models, and at a minimum these should be carefully compressed wherever detail can be spared.

Alternatively, procedurally generating assets on the client can avoid lengthy transfers in the first place. This is a huge benefit for users on slow connections, and gives the developer more direct control over how their game is constituted—not just for the initial loading step, but also when it comes to adapting levels of details for different quality settings.

Most of the geometry in Slow Roads is procedurally generated and simplistic, with custom shaders combining multiple textures to bring the detail. The drawback is that these textures can be heavy assets, though there are further opportunities for savings here, with methods such as stochastic texturing able to achieve greater detail from small source textures. And at an extreme level, it's also possible to generate textures entirely on the client with tools such as texgen.js. The same is even true for audio, with the Web Audio API allowing for sound generation with audio nodes.

With the benefit of procedural assets, generating the initial environment takes just 3.2 seconds on average. To best take advantage of the small up-front download size, a simple splash screen greets new visitors and postpones the expensive scene initialisation until after an affirmative button press. This also acts as a convenient buffer for bounced sessions, minimizing wasted transfer of dynamically-loaded assets.

Taking an agile approach to late optimization #

I've always considered the codebase for Slow Roads to be experimental, and as such have taken a fiercely agile approach to development. When working with a complex and rapidly-evolving system architecture, it can be difficult to predict where the important bottlenecks may occur. The focus should be on implementing the desired features quickly, rather than cleanly, and then working backwards to optimize systems where it really counts. The performance profiler in Chrome DevTools is invaluable for this step, and has helped me to diagnose some major issues with earlier versions of the game. Your time as a developer is valuable, so be sure you aren't spending time deliberating over problems that may prove insignificant or redundant.

Monitoring the user experience #

While implementing all of these tricks, it's important to be sure the game performs as expected in the wild. Accommodating a range of hardware capabilities is a staple aspect of any game development, but web games can target a much broader spectrum comprising both top-end desktops and decade-old mobile devices at once. The simplest way to approach this is by offering settings for adapting the most likely bottlenecks in your codebase—for both GPU- and CPU-intensive tasks—as revealed by your profiler.

Profiling on your own machine can only cover so much, however, so it's valuable to close the feedback loop with your users in some way. For Slow Roads I run simple analytics which report on performance along with contextual factors such as screen resolution. These analytics are sent to a basic Node backend using socket.io, along with any written feedback the user submits via the in-game form. In the early days, these analytics caught a lot of important issues that could be mitigated with simple changes to the UX, such as highlighting the settings menu when a consistently low FPS is detected, or warning that a user may need to enable hardware acceleration if the performance is particularly poor.

The slow roads ahead #

Even after taking all of these measures, there remains a significant portion of the player base that needs to play on lower settings—primarily those using lightweight devices which lack a GPU. While the range of quality settings available leads to a fairly even performance distribution, only 52% of players achieve above 55 FPS.

Fortunately, there are still many opportunities for making performance savings. Alongside adding further rendering tricks to reduce GPU demand, I hope to experiment with web workers in parallelising the environment generation in the near term, and may eventually see a need for incorporating WASM or WebGPU into the codebase. Any headroom I'm able to free up will allow for richer and more diverse environments, which will be the enduring goal for the remainder of the project.

As hobby projects go, Slow Roads has been an overwhelmingly fulfilling way to demonstrate how surprisingly elaborate, performant, and popular browser games can be. If I've been successful in piquing your interest in WebGL, know that technologically Slow Roads is a fairly shallow example of its full capabilities. I strongly encourage readers to explore the Three.js showcase, and those interested in web game development in particular would be welcome to the community at webgamedev.com.

The post Progressive Web Apps: So erstellst du deine eigene PWA appeared first at webdeasy.de.

The post Are Roblox Private Servers Permanent? 3 Minute Guide! appeared first on CSHAWK.

The post Why Roblox is Not Working? Reasons Explained! appeared first on CSHAWK.

The post Will Roblox Shutdown In 2023? Details Revealed! appeared first on CSHAWK.

The post What Roblox Game, Baller is From? Full Info! appeared first on CSHAWK.

The post Where Are APK Files Stored on Android? Updated OS Edition! appeared first on CSHAWK.

The post How Roblox Was Made? 3 Minutes Story! appeared first on CSHAWK.

The post Which Roblox Game Has Most Views? Full Analysis! appeared first on CSHAWK.

The post Why FreeFire Is Not Downloading In My Mobile? Easy FIX! appeared first on CSHAWK.

The post Can Roblox be Played on Xbox? Full Tutorial [Updated] appeared first on CSHAWK.

The post Which FreeFire Server is Best? Latest Analysis appeared first on CSHAWK.

The post Top 7 Fiction Books to Read on ZLibrary [2023] appeared first on CSHAWK.

The post Top 5 Websites to Visit Online When You Are Bored  appeared first on CSHAWK.

The post What is Freefire Hack? Download Latest Mod Game Apk appeared first on CSHAWK.

The post Where Freefire is Made? Origin of FreeFire + History appeared first on CSHAWK.

The post Can FreeFire Max Be Downloaded? 3 Minutes Tutorial appeared first on CSHAWK.

The post 50+ Working Free Hulu Accounts – Full Tutorial + UPDATED appeared first on CSHAWK.

The post Will FreeFire Return in India? Detailed Analysis! appeared first on CSHAWK.

The post Pokemon Go Like Games – Top 5 Similar Games Like Pokemon [Updated] appeared first on CSHAWK.

The post How to Tame a Cat in Minecraft? Full Updated Tutorial! appeared first on CSHAWK.

The post How to Make Lanterns in Minecraft? Full Tutorial appeared first on CSHAWK.

The post How to make lead in Minecraft – Updated FULL Tutorial appeared first on CSHAWK.

The post Arceus X Mod – Download Best Roblox Mod Menu Hack appeared first on CSHAWK.

The post Mobdro APK Download – Latest App For Android [2023] appeared first on CSHAWK.

The post Summoners War Mod Menu – Download Latest Hack Game appeared first on CSHAWK.

The post Dragon City APK – Download Latest Gaming App appeared first on CSHAWK.

The post Appmuck – Download Latest App for Android APK appeared first on CSHAWK.

The post Kahoot Cheat – How to cheat on Kahoot? Full Tutorial! appeared first on CSHAWK.

The post Clash Royale Hacked – Download Latest Game APK appeared first on CSHAWK.

The post 1v1.lol Unblocked – Unblock Gaming Website [2023] appeared first on CSHAWK.

The post Free Fire Advance Server – Download Latest Apk appeared first on CSHAWK.

The post Emergence of Cloud Management Dominating It Conventional Infrastructure appeared first on CSHAWK.

The post <strong>5 Advanced Tips and Tricks -Rainbow Six Siege</strong> appeared first on CSHAWK.

The post <strong>Top 10 Countries That Are the Largest Adopters of Crypto</strong> appeared first on CSHAWK.

The post How Data Is Integral To Any Business Today? appeared first on CSHAWK.

Web performance has been a focus for the company for a long time, but they recently formed a team to monitor performance and apply optimizations across different parts of the site.

This article summarizes the work done by Guille Paz, Pablo Carminatti, and Oleh Burkhay from Mercado Libre's frontend architecture team to optimize one of the Core Web Vitals: First Input Delay (FID) and its lab proxy, Total Blocking Time (TBT).

Long tasks, First Input Delay, and Total Blocking Time #

Running expensive JavaScript code can lead to long tasks, which are those that run for more than 50ms in the browser's main thread.

FID (First Input Delay) measures the time from when a user first interacts with a page (e.g. when they click on a link) to the time when the browser is actually able to begin processing event handlers in response to that interaction. A site that executes expensive JavaScript code will likely have several long tasks, which will end up negatively impacting FID.

To provide a good user experience, sites should strive to have a First Input Delay of less than 100 milliseconds:

While Mercado Libre's site was performing well in most sections, they found in the Chrome User Experience Report that product detail pages had a poor FID. Based on that information, they decided to focus their efforts on improving the interactivity for product pages in the site.

These pages allow the user to perform complex interactions, so the goal was interactivity optimization, without interfering with valuable functionality.

Measure interactivity of product detail pages #

FID requires a real user and thus cannot be measured in the lab. However, the Total Blocking Time (TBT) metric is lab-measurable, correlates well with FID in the field, and also captures issues that affect interactivity.

In the following trace, for example, while the total time spent running tasks on the main thread is 560 ms, only 345 ms of that time is considered total blocking time (the sum of the portions of each task that exceeds 50ms):

Mercado Libre took TBT as a proxy metric in the lab, in order to measure and improve the interactivity of product detail pages in the real world.

Here's the general approach they took:

• Use WebPageTest to determine exactly which scripts were keeping the main thread busy on a real device.
• Use Lighthouse to determine the impact of the changes in Max Potential First Input Delay (Max Potential FID).

Use WebPageTest to visualize long tasks #

WebPageTest (WPT) is a web performance tool that allows you to run tests on real devices in different locations around the world.

Mercado Libre used WPT to reproduce the experience of their users by choosing a device type and location similar to real users. Specifically, they chose a Moto 4G device and Dulles, Virginia, because they wanted to approximate the experience of Mercado Libre users in Mexico. By observing the main thread view of WPT, Mercado Libre found that there were several consecutive long tasks blocking the main thread for 2 seconds:

Analyzing the corresponding waterfall they found that a considerable part of those two seconds came from their analytics module. The main bundle size of the application was large (950KB) and took a long time to parse, compile, and execute.

Use Lighthouse to determine Max Potential FID #

Lighthouse doesn't allow you to choose between different devices and locations, but it's a very useful tool for diagnosing sites and obtaining performance recommendations.

When running Lighthouse on product detail pages, Mercado Libre found that the Max Potential FID was the only metric marked in red, with a value of 1710ms.

Based on this, Mercado Libre set a goal to improve their Max Potential FID score in a laboratory tool like Lighthouse and WebPageTest, under the assumption that these improvements would affect their real users, and therefore, show up in real user monitoring tools like the Chrome User Experience Report.

Optimize long tasks #

First iteration #

Based on the main thread trace, Mercado Libre set the goal of optimizing the two modules that were running expensive code.

They started optimizing the performance of the internal tracking module. This module contained a CPU-heavy task that wasn't critical for the module to work, and therefore could be safely removed. This led to a 2% reduction in JavaScript for the whole site.

After that they started to work on improving the general bundle size:

Mercado Libre used webpack-bundle-analyzer to detect opportunities for optimization:

• Initially they were requiring the full Lodash module. This was replaced with a per-method require to load only a subset of Lodash instead of the whole library, and used in conjunction with lodash-webpack-plugin to shrink Lodash even further.

They also applied the following Babel optimizations:

• Using @babel/plugin-transform-runtime to reuse Babel's helpers throughout the code, and reduce the size of the bundle considerably.
• Using babel-plugin-search-and-replace to replace tokens at build time, in order to remove a large configuration file inside the main bundle.
• Adding babel-plugin-transform-react-remove-prop-types to save some extra bytes by removing the prop types.

As a result of these optimizations, the bundle size was reduced by approximately 16%.

Measure impact #

The changes lowered Mercado Libre's consecutive long tasks from two seconds to one second:

Lighthouse showed a 57% reduction in Max Potential First Input Delay:

Second iteration #

The team continued digging into long tasks in order to find subsequent improvements.

Based on that information they decided to implement the following changes:

• Continue reducing the main bundle size to optimize compile and parse time (e.g. by removing duplicate dependencies throughout the different modules).
• Apply code splitting at component level, to divide JavaScript in smaller chunks and allow for smarter loading of the different components.
• Defer component hydration to allow for a smarter use of the main thread. This technique is commonly referred to as partial hydration.

Measure impact #

The resulting WebPageTest trace showed even smaller chunks of JS execution:

And their Max Potential FID time in Lighthouse was reduced by an additional 60%:

Visualize progress for real users #

While laboratory testing tools like WebPageTest and Lighthouse are great for iterating on solutions during development, the true goal is to improve the experience for real users.

The Chrome User Experience Report provides user experience metrics for how real-world Chrome users experience popular destinations on the web. The data from the report can be obtained by running queries in BigQuery, PageSpeedInsights, or the CrUX API.

The CrUX dashboard is an easy way to visualize the progress of core metrics:

Next steps #

Web performance is never a finished task, and Mercado Libre understands the value these optimizations bring to their users. While they continue applying several optimizations across the site, including prefetching in product listing pages, image optimizations, and others, they continue adding improvements to product listing pages to reduce Total Blocking Time (TBT), and by proxy FID, even more. These optimizations include:

• Iterating on the code splitting solution.
• Improving the execution of third-party scripts.
• Continuing improvements in asset bundling at the bundler level (webpack).

Mercado Libre has a holistic view of performance, so while they continue optimizing interactivity in the site, they have also started assessing opportunities for improvement on the other two current Core Web Vitals: LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) and CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) even more.

Through the adoption of Performance Budgets (derived after doing a competitive study with the Chrome User Experience Report) and a focus on key user-centric performance metrics, eBay was able to make significant improvements to site speed.

…and their Chrome User Experience Report data highlights these improvements, too.

There's still more work ahead but here's eBay's learnings so far.

Web Performance "cuts" #

The improvements eBay made were possible due to the reduction or "cuts" (in the size and time) of various entities that take part in a user's journey. This post covers topics that are relevant to the web developer community at large, rather than eBay-specific topics.

Reduce payload across all text resources #

One way to make sites fast is to simply load less code. eBay reduced their text payloads by trimming all the unused and unnecessary bytes of JavaScript, CSS, HTML, and JSON responses served to users. Previously, with every new feature, eBay kept increasing the payload of their responses, without cleaning up what was unused. This added up over time and became a performance bottleneck. Teams usually procrastinated on this cleanup activity, but you'd be surprised by how much eBay saved.

The "cut" here is the wasted bytes in the response payload.

Critical path optimization for above-the-fold content #

Not every pixel on the screen is equally important. The content above-the-fold is more critical than something below-the-fold. iOS/Android/desktop and web apps are aware of this, but what about services? eBay's service architecture has a layer called Experience Services, which the frontends (platform-specific apps and web servers) talk to. This layer is specifically designed to be view- or device-based, rather than entity-based like item, user, or order. eBay then introduced the concept of the critical path for Experience Services. When a request comes to these services, they work on getting the data for above-the-fold content immediately, by calling other upstream services in parallel. Once data is ready, it is instantly flushed. The below-the-fold data is sent in a later chunk or lazy-loaded. The outcome: users get to see above-the-fold content quicker.

The "cut" here is the time spent by services to display relevant content.

Image optimizations #

Images are one of the largest contributors to page bloat. Even small optimizations go a long way. eBay did two optimizations for images.

First, eBay standardized on the WebP image format for search results across all platforms, including iOS, Android, and supported browsers. The search results page is the most image-heavy page at eBay, and they were already using WebP, but not in a consistent pattern.

Second, though eBay's listing images are heavily optimized (in both size and format), the same rigor did not apply for curated images (for example, the top module on the homepage). eBay has a lot of hand-curated images, which are uploaded through various tools. Previously the optimizations were up to the uploader, but now eBay enforces the rules within the tools, so all images uploaded will be optimized appropriately.

The "cut" here is the wasted image bytes sent to users.

Predictive prefetch of static assets #

A user session on eBay is not just one page. It is a flow. For example, the flow can be a navigation from the homepage to a search page to an item page. So why don't pages in the flow help each other? That is the idea of predictive prefetch, where one page prefetches the static assets required for the next likely page.

With predictive prefetch, when a user navigates to the predicted page, the assets are already in the browser cache. This is done for CSS and JavaScript assets, where the URLs can be retrieved ahead of time. One thing to note here is that it helps only on first-time navigations. On subsequent navigations, the static assets will already be in the cache.

The "cut" here is the network time for CSS and JavaScript static assets on the first navigation.

Prefetching top search results #

When a user searches eBay, eBay's analytics data suggests that it is highly likely that the user will navigate to an item in the top 10 of the search results. So eBay now prefetches the items from search and keeps them ready for when the user navigates. The prefetching happens at two levels.

The first level happens server-side, where the item service caches the top 10 items in search results. When the user goes to one of those items, eBay now saves server processing time. Server-side caching is leveraged by platform-specific apps and is rolled out globally.

The other level happens in the browser cache, which is available in Australia. Item prefetch was an advanced optimization due to the dynamic nature of items. There are also many nuances to it: page impressions, capacity, auction items, and so on. You can learn more about it in LinkedIn's Performance Engineering Meetup presentation, or stay tuned for a detailed blog post on the topic from eBay's engineers.

The "cut" here can either be server processing time or network time, depending on where the item is cached.

Eager downloading of search images #

In the search results page, when a query is issued at a high level, two things happen. One is the recall/ranking step, where the most relevant items matching the query are returned. The second step is augmenting the recalled items with additional user-context related information such as shipping costs. eBay now immediately sends the first 10 item images to the browser in a chunk along with the header, so the downloads can start before the rest of the markup arrives. As a result, the images will now appear quicker. This change is rolled out globally for the web platform.

The "cut" here is the download start time for search result images.

Edge caching for autosuggestion data #

When users type in letters in the search box, suggestions pop-up. These suggestions do not change for letter combinations for at least a day. They are ideal candidates to be cached and served from a CDN (for a max of 24 hours), instead of requests going all the way to a data center. International markets especially benefit from CDN caching.

There was a catch, though. eBay had some elements of personalization in the suggestions pop-up, which can't be cached efficiently. Fortunately, it was not an issue in the platform-specific apps, as the user interface for personalization and suggestions could be separated. For the web, in international markets, latency was more important than the small benefit of personalization. With that out of the way, eBay now has autosuggestions served from a CDN cache globally for platform-specific apps and non-US markets for eBay.com.

The "cut" here is the network latency and server processing time for autosuggestions.

Edge caching for unrecognized homepage users #

For the web platform, the homepage content for unrecognized users is the same for a particular region. These are users who are either using eBay for the first time or starting a fresh session, hence no personalization. Though the homepage creatives keep changing frequently there is still room for caching.

eBay decided to cache the unrecognized user content (HTML) on their edge network (PoPs) for a short period. First-time users can now get homepage content served from a server near them, instead of from a faraway data center. eBay is still experimenting with this in international markets, where it will have a bigger impact.

The "cut" here is again both network latency and server processing time for unrecognized users.

Optimizations for other platforms #

iOS/Android app parsing improvements #

iOS/Android apps talk to backend services whose response format is typically JSON. These JSON payloads can be large. Instead of parsing the whole JSON to render something on the screen, eBay introduced an efficient parsing algorithm that optimizes for content that needs to be displayed immediately.

Users can now see the content quicker. In addition, for the Android app, eBay starts initializing the search view controllers as soon as the user starts typing in the search box (iOS already had this optimization). Previously this happened only after users pressed the search button. Now users can get to their search results faster. The "cut" here is the time spent by devices to display relevant content.

Android app startup time improvements #

This applies to cold start time optimizations for Android apps. When an app is cold started, a lot of initialization happens both at the OS level and application level. Reducing the initialization time at the application level helps users see the home screen quicker. eBay did some profiling and noticed that not all initializations are required to display content and that some can be done lazily.

More importantly, eBay observed that there was a blocking third-party analytics call that delayed the rendering on the screen. Removing the blocking call and making it async further helped cold start times. The "cut" here is the unnecessary startup time for Android apps.

Conclusions #

All the performance "cuts" eBay made collectively contributed towards moving the needle, and it happened over a period of time. The releases were phased in throughout the year, with each release shaving off tens of milliseconds, ultimately reaching the point where eBay is now:

Performance is a feature and a competitive advantage. Optimized experiences lead to higher user engagement, conversions, and ROI. In eBay's case, these optimizations varied from things that were low-effort to a few that were advanced.

Check out Speed by a thousand cuts to learn more and be on the lookout for more detailed articles by eBay engineers on their performance work in the near future.

Founded in 2015, Truebil is an Indian online marketplace that sells 100% certified used cars. With over 1.4 million monthly active users, it's a one-stop solution that includes title transfer, insurance, loans, and service warranties. Prospective customers can see individual product pages with images and detailed inspection reports and get vehicle evaluations with the site's "Compare" and "Truescore" features. Truebil differentiates its product with rich features, including personalized recommendations based on machine learning, an add-to-favorites feature, a share-a-car feature, and more.

Challenge #

Truebil is a lean startup with low-frequency, high-value transactions, so it was critical to choose the right platform to prioritize and invest in.

Truebil identified mobile as their target platform, and they chose the web for their first app, Truebil Lite, because of the web's easy discovery and low friction. Web technology provides lower development costs, less data and memory usage, and significantly lower customer acquisition costs than building an Android/iOS app. And by building a progressive web app (PWA), Truebil could get all the perks of the web and the benefits of iOS/Android.

Solution #

An in-house team took four months to develop Truebil Lite using React, Django, and Preact (for production migration). They set clear guiding principles for the web app based on user goals. The experience had to be:

• Fast on first load and subsequent navigations,
• Reliable, independent of the user's network or device constraints, and
• Engaging, especially for small mobile screens, so users would want to return to it.

Optimize for fast first load and navigations #

Using Lighthouse to guide performance optimizations, the team adopted a performance-first culture while implementing new features. Truebil was able to significantly improve user experience by prioritizing the First Contentful Paint and Time to Interactive (TTI) metrics and optimizing for fast first loads, repeat visits, and smooth navigation. The team achieved those results by setting performance budgets and using a variety of techniques to achieve them.

Set performance budgets #

With a performance-first mindset, the Truebil team chose to architect their experience as a single page app with server-side rendering for first load and client-side rendering for subsequent loads. Keeping web apps with client side rendering performant can be difficult, so Truebil set very strict performance budgets to ensure they don't compromise on speed, especially as they add more features.

The team set strict milestone-based budgets for TTI with the goal of keeping it below five seconds. To meet that goal they manually ensured no build would exceed a 250 KB JavaScript bundle size, kept a constant check on image sizes, and continually tracked the app's Lighthouse performance score.

Optimize JavaScript bundles #

The team started with the basics by using the PRPL pattern to precache and optimize JavaScript payloads and by moving to HTTP/2 to serve critical JavaScript bundles.

To lazy-load non-critical resources, they used their framework-level lazy-loading components to load below-the-fold fragments.

To remove any JavaScript bundle bottlenecks, the team reduced payloads via code splitting. They used component- and route-based chunking to reduce main bundle size and improve their loading time by 44%, with TTI falling from 6 seconds to about 5 seconds and First Meaningful Paint (FMP) from 4.1 seconds to 3.6 seconds.

Inline critical CSS #

To further improve FMP, the team used Lighthouse to find opportunities for and validate the impact of performance optimizations. Lighthouse indicated that reducing render blocking CSS would have the biggest effect, so Truebil inlined all critical CSS and deferred non-critical CSS. This technique reduced FMP by around 2 seconds.

Avoid multiple, costly round trips to any origin #

To mitigate overhead from DNS and TLS, Truebil used <link rel="preconnect"> and <link rel="dns-prefetch">. This approach causes the browser to complete the TLS handshake as soon as possible on page load and pre-resolve cross-origin domain names, allowing for a secure, snappy user experience.

Dynamically prefetch the next page #

By analyzing their data, the team identified the most common user journeys that they could optimize for. In these cases, the app dynamically downloads the next page resource by using <link rel=prefetch> to ensure smooth navigation for users. While the team manually identifies the links to prefetch, they use webpack to bundle the JS for those links.

Optimize images and fonts #

Images are a critical part of Truebil's product experience and credibility, with each product listing including up to 40 pictures. To ensure that images do not block page load, the team chose to serve all their resources from a CDN and use imagemagick for image optimization. They also Gzipped all compressible resources, including images, JavaScript, and CSS, to further cut down load time.

To avoid a flash of invisible text while keeping load time as low as possible, Truebil set up their CSS to use system fonts as a fallback until external fonts have loaded.

Further optimizations #

When the app was ready, the team wanted to further reduce the vendor bundle size and JavaScript execution time, so they switched their React app to Preact in production. (Learn more in the React collection.) This approach helped them reduce the vendor bundle size from 82.3 KB to 51.2 KB.

Build in reliability #

With a focus on the Indian market, a vast majority of Truebil's users access their product on patchy networks that sometimes fall into bandwidths as low as 2G. So building a resilient experience was critical not only to improving performance under constrained network conditions but also to delivering a product that their users could rely on—one that always works.

A hybrid caching strategy for reliable loading #

The interactivity and rate of change for Truebil's content vary a lot. To ensure that all its content is both fresh and reliable, the Truebil team implemented API caching using a combination of network-first, cache-first, and fastest-first strategies.

For static pages, such as the subscriptions page, Truebil uses a cache-first strategy to go to their subscription API cache first, falling back to the network.

For pages with dynamic content that rarely changes, such as their product listing or details pages, Truebil uses a network-first strategy so that the browser first checks the network for content before falling back to the API cache if the network is unavailable.

And for dynamic pages that change often, such as the home, filter, search, and city pages, Truebil uses a fastest-first strategy to choose between network or cache based on whichever comes first. To ensure that content is fresh, the cache is updated whenever the network response differs from what's in the cache.

Service workers for a full offline experience #

Even though a large part of Truebil's content is highly dynamic—cars can be added or bought at any time—the team wanted to ensure that their users had some content to engage with, even if they were going through patchy networks or were completely offline.

Using service workers, the team was able to cache both static data and the dynamic data that a user has already interacted with so that the user can view it offline. To make sure users know that content might change when they come back online, the team changed the UI to grayscale to indicate offline mode. Browsing product pages is a critical part of the Truebil user journey. Users who have visited the PWA at least once can browse listings and product pages that they have visited before but won't be able to see any updates to the listing or the product.

Improve engagement to keep users coming back #

An engaging first experience #

Since most of their users come from paid channels, Truebil needed to supplement their fast loading web app with a product that surfaces highly relevant recommendations to increase conversions. While the team uses a recommendation system based on sophisticated filtering for existing users, their system doesn't work for users who log in for the first time.

To avoid giving their first-time users a cold start, the team integrated a recommendation system using their digital marketing efforts. They add product details such as car model, price, and body type into an ad's destination URL through a UTM parameter, which is read by their recommendation system and reflected in the products surfaced. In case the sysme reads no such details in the URL, it falls back to popular cars, which is a combination of popular models, popular budgets, and cars that have been popular in the last few weeks or days.

An installable web app #

Having built a fast, full-featured web app with a compelling user experience, Truebil wanted to ensure that their users would keep coming back. They realized that making the app installable would make repeat visits much more seamless.

The team implemented the Add to Home Screen feature to make their product a full progressive web app (PWA). This approach allowed users to add Truebil Lite to the home screen and launch it in full-screen mode. And since they had already implemented an offline mode, the team was able to add the new feature easily.

To ensure that their users weren't spammed and to increase the probability that users would install the app, the team recently updated their strategy for promoting PWA installation so that installation prompts appear when they'll actually be useful to different kinds of users. Truebil settled on a three-part strategy:

• Show prompts when the user has completed an action or is idle.
• Show contextual prompts to mature users.
• Show a banner when the user has spent a set amount of time on the site.

Default banners on process completion and on high-traffic pages #

The team decided to show an installation banner when a user completes a task or is on high-traffic pages but idle (that is, not taking an action, such as scrolling or filling out a form). This approach allowed them to avoid interrupting the user's activity.

Contextual prompts for mature users #

For users who had interacted with the app for a while, the team used highly contextual custom messages to show the value of installing the app to the home screen:

A custom banner for time-based prompts #

Finally, the team built in a non-intrusive banner with a notification-like design that's triggered at specific events, such as opening a listing page or after the user has spent a set amount of time spent in the app:

Because of these improvements, Truebil's conversion and engagement rates have grown significantly with 26% longer user sessions and 61% more conversions, which is significant for their business given the high transaction value of each conversion.

For a startup with limited resources, choosing the right platform can be critical to the success of the business. Moving to a PWA focused on speed, resilience, and engagement, enabled us to increase our revenue-to-marketing spend by 80% thanks to increased conversions and the frictionless reach of the web.

Rakesh Raman, Co-Founder and Chief of Product & Data Science at Truebil

Building a faster web #

At YouTube, performance relates to how fast videos and other content—such as recommendations and comments—load on web pages. Performance is also measured by how quickly YouTube responds to user interactions such as search, player control, likes, and shares.

Growing developing markets, such as Brazil, India, and Indonesia are important for YouTube mobile web. Because many users in these regions have slower devices and limited network bandwidth, ensuring a fast and seamless experience is a critical goal.

To provide an inclusive experience for all users, YouTube set out to improve performance metrics such as Core Web Vitals through lazy-loading and code modernization.

Improving Core Web Vitals #

To identify areas of improvement, the YouTube team used the Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX) to see how real users were experiencing video watch and search result pages on mobile in the field. They realized their Core Web Vitals metrics had a lot of room for improvement, with their Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) metric clocking in at 4-6 seconds in some cases. This was substantially higher than their target of 2.5 seconds.

To identify areas for improvement, they turned to Lighthouse to audit the YouTube watch pages, revealing a low Lighthouse (lab) score with a First Contentful Paint (FCP) of 3.5 seconds and a LCP of 8.5 seconds.

To optimize FCP and LCP, the YouTube team dove into several experiments, resulting in two big discoveries.

1. The first discovery was that they could improve performance by moving the HTML for the Video Player above the script that makes the Video Player interactive. Lab tests indicated that this could improve both FCP and LCP from 4.4 seconds to 1.1 seconds.

2. The second discovery was that LCP only considers <video> element poster images and not frames from the video stream itself. YouTube has traditionally optimized for the fastest time until the video starts playing, so to improve LCP the team started also optimizing how quickly they could deliver their poster image. They experimented with a few variations of poster images and picked the one that scored the best in user testing. As a result of this work, both FCP and LCP showed marked improvement, with field LCP improving from 4.6 seconds to 2.0 seconds.

While these optimizations did improve LCP, the team felt that the current definition of the LCP metric wasn't fully capturing, from the user's perspective, when the "main content" of the page had loaded—which is the goal of LCP.

To address these concerns, members of the YouTube team partnered with members of the Chrome team to explore ways that the LCP metric could be improved to address their use case. After considering the feasibility and impact of a few options, the teams landed on a proposal to consider the paint time of the first frame of a video element as an LCP candidate.

Once this change lands in Chrome, the YouTube team is excited to continue their work optimizing for LCP. And the updated version of the metric will mean these optimizations will have a more direct impact on real-user experiences.

Modularization with lazy loading #

YouTube pages contained many modules that were eagerly loaded. To optimize how 50+ components were rendered, the team built a component to JS module map that would tell the client which modules to load. By marking components as lazy, the JS modules would load later, reducing the initial load time of the page and the amount of unused Javascript sent to the client.

However, after lazy loading was implemented, the team noticed a waterfall effect that lazy loaded components and their dependencies would load at suboptimal times.

To solve this problem, the team determined the minimal set of components needed in a view and batched them in a single network request. The results were improved page speed, reduced JavaScript parse time, and, ultimately, better initial rendering times.

State-management across components #

YouTube was experiencing performance issues due to its player controls, especially on older devices. Code analysis showed that the player, which allows users to control features such as playback speed and progress, had become over-componentized over time.

Each progress bar touch-move event triggered two extra style recalculations and took 21.17 ms during performance test runs in the lab. As new controls were added over time, the pattern of decentralized control would often cause circular dependencies and memory leaks, negatively impacting watch page performance.

To fix the issues due to decentralized control, the team updated the player UI to synchronize all updates, essentially refactoring the player to one top-level component that would pass down data to its children. This ensured only one UI update (render) cycle for any state change, eliminating chained updates. The new player progress bar touch-move event has no style recalculations during its JavaScript execution and now only requires 25% the time of the old player.

This code modernization also resulted in additional performance improvements such as improved watch load times on old devices, fewer abandoned playbacks, and a reduced number of non-fatal errors.

Conclusion #

As a result of YouTube's investment in performance, watch pages load much faster with 76% of YouTube's mobile website URLs now passing Core Web Vitals metric thresholds in the field. On desktop, lab LCP for the watch page was reduced from approximately 4.6 seconds to 1.6 seconds. Interaction and rendering performance of the site, especially on the YouTube video player, are seeing up to 75% less time spent in JavaScript execution than before.

Improvements to the performance of YouTube web over the last year have also improved business metrics, including watch time and daily active users. Based on the success of these efforts, we plan to continue exploring even more ways to optimize in the future.

In part two of this series, "Building an accessible web", you’ll read how YouTube made their website more accessible for screen-reader users.

With special thanks to Gilberto Cocchi, Lauren Usui, Benji Bear, Bo Aye, Bogdan Balas, Kenny Tran, Matthew Smith, Phil Harnish, Leena Sahoni, Jeremy Wagner, Philip Walton, Harleen Batra and both the YouTube and Chrome teams for their contributions to this work.

Understanding the impact of web performance on user experience, the Rakuten 24 team has been continuously measuring, optimizing and monitoring Core Web Vitals and other metrics.

As a result, over 75% of their users are experiencing good Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID) and First Contentful Paint (FCP). However, they are still working on Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) improvements.

After analyzing homepage data, Rakuten 24 found that a good LCP score can lead to:

• An increase of up to 61.13% in conversion rate.
• 26.09% in revenue per visitor.
• 11.26% in average order value.
• A good FID score can lead to an increase of up to 55.88% in conversion rate.

To further correlate Core Web Vitals and business metrics, Rakuten 24 also ran an A/B test focused on optimizing Core Web Vitals and related metrics, and saw an improvement of:

• 53.37% in revenue per visitor.
• 33.13% in conversion rate.
• 15.20% in average order value.
• 9.99% in average time spent.
• A 35.12% reduction in exit rate.

Highlight the opportunity #

Though optimizing web performance is a smart investment to improve user experience and business growth, Rakuten 24 team understands how difficult it can be to convince stakeholders to adopt Core Web Vitals and focus on web performance. They believe that showing stakeholders exactly what kind of Return on Investment (ROI) performance optimization can bring is the best way to get them on board.

Being a relatively new and independent service, Rakuten 24 used their advantage of flexibility to take up the challenge. They believe that the result of their case study would help them make more data-oriented decisions in the future, as well as help other developers measure the impact of their work and convince their stakeholders that improving performance is worth the investment. Find out how they did it in this post.

Optimize JavaScript and resources #

• Eliminate render-blocking resources.
• Split code and use dynamic import().
• Split all content into separate parts and lazy load below-the-fold HTML files.
• Execute and load JavaScript on demand.
• Identify slow JavaScript resources and optimize the loading process by using the async attribute on <script> tags and establishing early connections to important origins (Resource hints such as dns-prefetch, preconnect, and preload).
• Remove unused code, and minify and compress code.
• Use a CDN.
• Control caching using Service Worker with Workbox.

Optimize images #

• Lazy load below-the-fold images.
• Optimize images with a CDN, deliver properly sized images, compress images, and adopt the right image formats for the job (WebP, SVG, Web Fonts).

Optimize CLS #

• Use CSS aspect-ratio to reserve the required space for images while the images are loading.
• Use CSS min-height to minimize layout shifts while elements are lazy loaded.

Performance measuring #

Besides using PageSpeed Insights to audit their website, the team wanted to find a better way to know what the users are actually experiencing in the field. Therefore, Rakuten 24 decided to use the web-vitals JavaScript library to measure Core Web Vitals and other metrics in the field and send the data to inhouse analytics tool.

Performance analyzing #

The team analyzed the collected field data to determine if there is any correlation between the Core Web Vitals and the key business metrics. They found out that the converted users tend to experience a better LCP than the users who didn’t convert.

The collected data also revealed that:

• A good LCP can lead to an increase of up to 61.13% in conversion rate, 26.09% in revenue per visitor, and 11.26% in average order value.
• A good FID can lead to an increase of up to 55.88% in conversion rate compared to the overall average data.

Performance monitoring #

The team built a performance monitoring dashboard using the data collected in the field and business intelligence tool. This is important for monitoring progress and preventing regressions.

A/B test #

Believing that A/B tests are a good way to measure the business impact of performance optimizations, the team optimized one of their landing pages for Core Web Vitals then compared the optimized version with the original page via A/B test for a month. They picked a landing page with significant traffic and conversion so that the test could achieve meaningful results. During the test duration, 50% of the traffic was sent to the optimized landing page (version A), and 50% was sent to the original page (version B). The only difference between version A and version B was that version A was optimized for Core Web Vitals and there were no other functional or visual differences.

The optimized version A finished loading 0.4 seconds earlier in the mobile load test and shows no significant layout shift. In fact, the CLS of version A improved by 92.72% compared to version B. Other Web Vitals scores also improved: FID improved by 7.95%, FCP improved by 8.45%, and TTFB improved by 18.03%.

Comparing the optimized version A to the unoptimized version B, Rakuten 24 found that version A brings about:

• 53.37% increase in revenue per visitor.
• 33.13% increase in conversion rate.
• 15.20% increase in average order value.
• 9.99% increase in average time spent.
• 35.12% reduction in exit rate.

Conclusion #

Web performance optimization is challenging but rewarding. By taking a data-driven approach, Rakuten 24 has successfully delivered better user experience as well as measured positive impact on their business. Understanding that this is just a part of the journey not the destination, they will continue improving their website to provide online shoppers with more delightful experiences.

Optimization requires a joint effort and developers do not have to be alone on this journey. By sharing their struggles and achievements, Rakuten 24 hopes that more developers can use Core Web Vitals data to develop a mutual understanding with stakeholders then work together towards high-quality user experience and business growth.

In 2019 GoDaddy launched Websites + Marketing with a commitment to deliver tools and services that are easy to use and help business owners achieve their goals. Websites + Marketing integrates website building with marketing and eCommerce tools and pairs them with best-in-class guidance to help customers achieve success with their new ventures.

Since the launch of Websites + Marketing, performance has been an important part of the product and something that has been monitored and worked on actively. In this article, we will review GoDaddy's journey from using lab performance testing to using real world data with Core Web Vitals, and the series of improvements made to the product to get a very high pass rate for our customer's sites.

Tracking performance with Lighthouse #

We have relied on Lighthouse data for performance tracking. Every time a website is published on the platform, we measure its performance using our internal tool named "Lighthouse4u", which provides Google Lighthouse as a service https://github.com/godaddy/lighthouse4u. This gave us a good indication of how sites were generally performing in a lab setting.

Because the millions of sites we host on our platform have a wide range of features and content, it was important to combine performance data with metadata about each site being tested (such as template used, type of widgets rendered, and so on). This allowed us to draw conclusions on what website features had lower performance, while also providing insight for where to look for improvements.

For example, this helped us identify that the "popup modal" was having a negative impact on page speed; sites with the feature performed 12 points lower than without. After making updates to the code to defer loading of JavaScript, we improved our Lighthouse score by 2 points. We were able to apply this learning to other features such as the "cookie banner" that renders soon after page load.

Along with looking at problematic sites based on features, we conducted an analysis of our JavaScript bundle and saw that a large portion of its size came from external dependencies (immutable.js and draft.js). We reduced the bundle size by restructuring consumers to lazy load dependencies on demand. This resulted in over a 50% drop in common JavaScript bundle size, which went from over 200 KB to around 90 KB (minified). The smaller bundle size allowed the browser to load external assets and execute critical scripts earlier in the initial site loading lifecycle, leading to gains in Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) and First Input Delay (FID).

Thanks to our continued efforts, the average customer site Lighthouse score moved from around 40 points in November 2020 to above 70 points in May 2021. However, not all our attempts worked and we were sometimes surprised when the results were not always consistent between what was tested in local test environments and the results we got in the field. Lab results had been really helpful, but it was time to focus on real user experiences observed in the field.

Tracking real user data with Core Web Vitals #

After adding the web-vitals library to our customer's sites, we were able to measure data on actual devices from real visitors, where hardware, network speed, user interaction (such as scrolling or clicking) are not at a consistent baseline as in a lab setting using Lighthouse. This was a big step in the right direction, as we now had data that was representative of what our website visitors were experiencing.

Focusing on our weakest link: Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) #

Analyzing new data gave us a new perspective on what had to be done to improve website speed. Because of work done to improve the Lighthouse score, our 75th percentile LCP was 860 ms and our FID at the same threshold was below 10 ms, so we enjoyed a high pass rate for these metrics on our customer's sites: 78% and 98%, respectively. However, the Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) numbers look quite different from what we were used to with Lighthouse. Our CLS at the 75th percentile was 0.17–above the 0.1 threshold to "pass"–and our pass rate was thus only 47% over all of our sites.

That metric dragged down our overall pass rate to 40%, so we decided to set an ambitious goal to move that number to above 60% by the end of August 2021. To do that, we would have to focus on CLS.

In real life, users interact with the page and scroll past the "above the fold" content, which is something Core Web Vitals captures better. Due to the variability in how users interact with the site while it initially loads, CLS differed from lab and field data.

The road to passing all Core Web Vitals #

Improving performance takes trial and error, and every attempt doesn't always work as expected. However, here are a few improvements that helped us achieve our goals.

Reserving space for loading images drastically improved our CLS score as it prevents the content below the images from shifting. We used the CSS aspect-ratio property to address this on browsers which support it. For those that do not, we loaded a transparent placeholder image that was cached and just a few bytes in size, thus loading almost instantaneously.

This generic image behavior allowed us to pre-calculate the final image height during server-side rendering, based on viewport width and image aspect ratio. This resulted in HTML markup with vertical space appropriately reserved for the final image. The improvement was particularly observable on mobile devices, since images are rendered to the full span of mobile viewports.

Certain components on our customers sites have dynamic content (for example, a list of external customer reviews) and could not be converted to pure CSS to leverage performance benefits of server side rendering. These are difficult areas to improve layout shifts because content (thus height) will vary. In those cases, we wrapped the component in a container with a min-height applied, predetermined based on observation of the average height for each of the specific components. The min-height is removed once the inner dynamic component is done rendering. While not perfect, this solution allowed us to reduce layout shift by a lot.

While focusing on CLS improvements, we continued to work on LCP. On many websites, images are the biggest culprit contributing to LCP and for us it was an obvious area of improvement. We had made improvements to lazy load images using IntersectionObserver but realized that image sizes were not set in the most optimal way for each breakpoint (mobile, tablet, desktop, large desktop), so we updated our image generation code to clamp and scale images per breakpoint and then again scale resolution based on pixel density. As an example, this reduced the size of a specific large image from 192 KB to 102 KB.

To quickly render websites on devices with poor network connections, we added code to dynamically scale down image quality based on connection speed. This can be done using the downlink property returned by navigator.connection. We apply URL-based query parameters to reduce image quality through our asset API based on those network conditions.

A number of sections of our customer sites are dynamically loaded. Since we know what sections will be rendered on a given site when it's published, we used the rel=preconnect resource hint to initialize the connection and necessary handshakes ahead of time. We also use resource hints to load fonts and other important resources quickly.

When building their sites, customers add various sections which might have inline scripts to allow different functionalities. Having these scripts inline throughout the HTML page isn't always optimal for performance. We decided to externalize these scripts to allow the browser to load and parse script content asynchronously. Newly externalized scripts could also be shared across pages. This allowed for additional performance gains in the form of browser and CDN caching. We kept critical scripts in-line in order for the browser to parse and execute them faster.

Results #

Focusing our effort on CLS paid off, our Core Web Vitals pass rate went from around 40% to almost 70%: an improvement of 75%!

As users come back to our platform to make updates and republish their sites, they get the latest performance improvements and as a result the number of sites with "passing Core Web Vitals" has been steadily growing as shown on the chart below:

Conclusions #

Finding areas for performance improvements and successfully tracking progress is highly dependent on what tools are used for measurement. While Lighthouse was useful for measuring above-the-fold performance in a "lab setting", it did not accurately capture performance issues that only occurred from user interactions (such as scrolling through the page).

Tracking real world Core Web Vitals with metadata allowed us to visualize, target, and measure the impact of our improvements. The journey to improve Core Web Vitals scores allowed the team to identify and replace non-performant patterns found throughout our codebase. Sometimes promising changes didn't have nearly the impact we expected, other times the opposite happened. It's not a pristine world out there, so you have to keep trying.

To improve the performance culture across teams and drive significant improvements to their web experience, luxury e-commerce fashion retailer Farfetch launched a project to define and use true customer-centric performance metrics. They aimed to correlate these to business metrics as a way of illuminating how performance affects the company's KPIs.

Their ambitions didn't end there, though. Ultimately, the project's objective was cultural change at scale—breaking down silos within the organization and introducing a new business-oriented language to give everyone a shared way to talk about what used to be considered technical topics. Farfetch wanted to have website speed performance as a shared responsibility, facilitate informed decision making and establish it as a main pillar of what makes a good web experience.

To kick off, Farfetch realized a single department couldn't achieve this as before and assembled a core team of experts from various areas in the company—engineering, infrastructure, architecture, and product—that put in place a step-by-step strategy to revamp how the company looked at this topic.

Step 1: Defining, measuring and monitoring metrics #

First of all, Farfetch needed to have the right monitoring tools in place to understand current state and deviations across journey touchpoints and applications.

They used both lab data and real user monitoring (field data) to track Core Web Vitals and additional user-centric performance metrics to analyze the current state of speed performance. They used JavaScript and the web-vitals.js library to capture the data, which allowed the product analytics team to gain visibility of performance metrics alongside business metrics in the same session and thereby start examining how one affects the other.

The multidisciplinary group set out to understand which metrics mattered most for the business. To do so, they looked at the critical journey path of Farfetch users and tried to link that journey with performance markers. In addition to the Core Web Vitals metrics that Google has outlined, each representing a distinct facet of the user experience, they also used custom JavaScript to track Time to First Byte (TTFB), First Contentful Paint (FCP), First Paint and Time to Interactive (TTI).

The metrics are collected using several methods of the Performance API, Long Tasks API and Google's polyfills. More details can be found in this mid 2020 Farfetch Tech Blog post by Manuel Garcia, Senior Principal Engineer for the Web.

On the data analytics side, Farfetch have their own multi-channel tracking solution used by front end applications called Omnitracking. It tracks the events generated by page views, user actions and system actions. The Omnitracking Data Model is Farfetch's solution for analytical, data exploration and reporting cases, made on the top of the events generated by trackers. The data model's objective is to help and support anyone who needs to understand:

• User behavior
• User experience on Farfetch applications
• Applications usage
• Macro and micro conversions
• Cross channel and funnel analysis

The idea was then to add the performance data of each pageview on farfetch.com, captured by JavaScript, to this data layer. Following this model guaranteed a match between performance data and the main conversion funnel metrics for each session and the base for an analytical exploration on the topic.

Finally, Farfetch established time-based performance budgets for each metric across the main journey pages and a governance process to handle budget breaches. They've also started incorporating performance metrics on CI pipelines to understand budget deviations as soon as possible in the development flow.

Step 2: Communicating via business language #

With performance data now available in Farfetch's internal business intelligence datasets, the analytics team started exploring mathematical models and patterns in the data that could indicate a correlation between performance metrics and business KPIs (for example, conversion rate and percentage of single-page visits), allowing a new view of the financial impact of site speed and UX for the business. This enabled performance to be discussed in a common language with the business decision makers. The analysis included all Core Web Vitals and the other metrics Farfetch deemed valuable. It revealed truly impactful insights.

Having in mind that Google recommends Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) to stay below 2.5 seconds to provide an optimal user experience, Farfetch studied this threshold carefully and found meaningful results.

Farfetch statistical correlation analysis showed that beyond that point, the conversion rate starts to drop, as well as the exit rate rises. This shows that users really start to feel the downside of a slow page load perception and conversion rate decreases on average -1.3% with each 100ms more of LCP.

Farfetch also verified an exit rate decrease of -3.1% for each 0.01 less on the Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) score, reaffirming the impact of page stability to keep users on a website.

Regarding page interactivity and fluidity, although First Input Delay (FID) is tracked and analyzed continuously, Farfetch also measures TTI, which proved to be a considerably impactful metric for the Farfetch business conversion funnel.

For this, they injected Google's TTI polyfill into the website to store this metric. Using the Long Tasks API to report long tasks (tasks taking longer than 50 milliseconds on the browser's main thread).

The analytics team was then able to find that the conversion rate increased 2.8% for each second reduction on TTI, making a strong case for better code efficiency and unclogging the browser's main thread.

In the end, this analysis was also able to show that some metrics didn't have a significant impact on business KPIs, or some would be more relevant at different stages of the user journey. This allowed for a complete understanding of the opportunities at hand on each point of the conversion funnel.

Step 3: Embedding cultural change #

Showcasing the insights above alongside qualitative user research on user perception of site speed was paramount to establish alignment with company goals, secure executive-level awareness and buy-in for performance based decision making across product roadmaps. It was now possible to prove how much performance was worth for Farfetch.

To streamline prioritization, Farfetch created a self-service tool they named the Site Speed Business Case Calculator, taking inspiration from Google's Speed Impact Calculator. It allows any product manager to create a business case out of performance improvements by calculating the business impact on the fly. With a data model using the correlation between conversion rate and user experience metrics, it's flexible to adapt to different product scopes, devices and user journey touch points.

Meanwhile, a set of self-service analytical dashboards have created business-wide visibility of real-time performance indicators and their impact on the business. Performance is now becoming fully embedded in product development, and product teams enjoy easy access to metrics, auditing tools, and performance budget monitoring. Furthermore, because of the data layer integration, performance metrics are also available on Farfetch A/B testing tooling, giving product managers yet another powerful vector of insights.

In recent months, the core team is also on track to establish this culture not only on front-end development teams but also within the platform domain, using similar methodologies to monitor and prove the impact of the main micro services and transactions.

There have been a number of Farfetch driven presentations on this topic but also external mentions. For example, a mention on a 2021 Google I/O talk on the business impact of Core Web Vitals. This also contributed to giving continuous relevance to the theme and solidified the team's strategy on culture.

Step 4: Improving metrics #

In the end, all of this work needed to contribute to Farfetch objectively improving their website speed metrics, and guaranteeing that their teams would follow best in class practices and pursue enhancement opportunities.

One of the main opportunities detected in 2021 was the need to improve LCP on the two main page types of Farfetch—product pages and product listing pages.

The teams addressed how they were loading the main content of those pages. Armed with a business case that showed the impact of chasing this opportunity, they were able to:

• Adapt the product image loading component from a JavaScript-based solution to a native implementation.
• Define the priority of the images and divide them into critical and non-critical assets.
• Load critical images early, with the source already inline in the HTML and using <link rel="preload"> so they download as soon as possible.
• Use the <img loading="lazy"> attribute for non-critical images, with a polyfill using Intersection Observer on unsupported browsers, such as Safari.

With this, they were able to move the needle and prove through A/B testing the hypothesis and business impact. On product pages for example, this effort shaved off more than 600ms, and the A/B test showed an uplift on conversion rate in the range of 1-5% with the company's defined confidence level.

Below are the improvements the team were able to make in terms of the percentage of pageviews that are considered "good", "needs improvement" and "poor", based on Google's definition for LCP score.

The rewards of a faster site and better working practices #

Building a culture around performance and tools like the business case calculator allowed everyone to begin speaking a shared language that can be understood by product managers, stakeholders, and engineers alike. This has precipitated ongoing discussions around how to prioritize new initiatives and performance enhancements.

"We wanted to break the cycle of performance being a tech-only concern, something owned only by the engineering team to deal with and fix," explains Farfetch's Web Channels Senior Principal Product Manager, Rui Santos. "Connecting performance metrics with business metrics was surprisingly effective to pass the message across very, very quickly. Business drives the company, and connecting its success to speed metrics encouraged a broader set of stakeholders to understand and navigate the trade-off decisions."

In the luxury e-commerce segment, whether your site is fast or slow can dictate how consumers see your brand and your service quality as a whole. For users, quality equates to luxury—and this applies to every aspect of their experience, including how your website performs. With site speed producing a proven effect on conversion rate, performance now occupies a safe position in forward planning at Farfetch.

なぜパスワードレスか #

Yahoo! JAPAN では以前、一般的なWebサービスのようにログイン ID とパスワードによる認証を基本としていました。しかし、パスワードは不正アクセスの被害を受ける可能性が高く、また、パスワードにまつわる問い合わせも非常に多い状況でした。

パスワードに関連して様々な攻撃を観測しておりますが、パスワードリスト型攻撃やフィッシング詐欺などが中心となっています。上述したとおり、Yahoo! JAPAN が提供するサービスには e コマースなど金銭に関わるものがあるため不正アクセスの被害やアカウントを失った際のユーザーの被害が大きくなりがちです。

パスワードリスト型攻撃が多い背景としては、複数のアプリや Web サイトでのパスワード使いまわしが多い現状があります。以下の数字は Yahoo! JAPAN が行ったアンケートの結果です。おおよそ 60% 以上のユーザーが複数のサービスでパスワードを使いまわしていると回答しており、パスワードリスト型攻撃が有効な攻撃方法となっていると考えられます。

50 _%

50% 以上が ID / パスワードを 6 個以上使用

60 _%

60% 以上が「複数のサービスでパスワードを使いまわしている」

70 _%

最も利用されているログイン方法は「パスワード」で約 76%

パスワードに関する問い合わせとしては、パスワードを忘れてしまったという問い合わせが大半でした。パスワードに関連して、ログイン ID も忘れてしまったという問い合わせもあり、これらの問い合わせだけで、最も多い時期ではアカウントにまつわる問い合わせの 1/3 以上を占めている状況でした。

これらの状況を改善するべく、Yahoo! JAPAN はパスワードレスに移行すると判断しました。パスワードレスを進めることでセキュリティだけでなくユーザビリティについても改善できると考えています。

セキュリティ観点ではユーザーの認証手段からパスワードを無くすことで、特にリスト型攻撃への被害を減らすことが出来、ユーザビリティ観点ではパスワードという記憶による認証に頼らない認証手段を提供することで、パスワードを忘れてログインできない、という事態を無くすことが出来ます。

従来からいろいろなセキュリティ向上の取り組みを行っていましたが、単純にセキュリティが高いだけでは利用者に負担をかけるだけになってしまい、結果としてセキュリティの高い状態を実現できません。ユーザビリティを共に向上させられることや、セキュリティを高める必然性が伝わるようなコミュニケーションを心がける必要があると考えています。それが結果としてユーザビリティだけではなく、セキュリティを向上させることに 繋がります。

Yahoo! JAPAN のパスワードレスの取り組み #

Yahoo! JAPAN ではパスワードレスを進めるため、いろいろな取り組みをしています。大別すると、

1. パスワードに代わる認証手段の提供
2. パスワードの無効化
3. パスワードレスなアカウント登録

の3つがあります。

1、2 は既存の利用者に対して、3 は新規の利用者に対しての取り組みです。

1. パスワードに代わる認証手段の提供 #

パスワードを無効にするのであれば、パスワードに変わる認証手段を提供しなければいけません。

Yahoo! JAPAN では、パスワードの代替として主に下記のような手段を提供しています。

1. SMS 認証
2. FIDO 認証

加えて、メール認証やパスワード + SMS OTP、パスワード + メール OTP などの認証手段も提供しています。

SMS 認証 #

SMS 認証は、ログインしようとしているユーザーが登録・確認済みの電話番号に SMS で 6 桁程度の認証用コードを送り、そのコードの入力によって認証する仕組みです。ユーザーは SMS が届くと、アプリを開いて認証用コードを記憶、もしくはコピーして入力する必要がありました。

iOS では以前から SMS を OS が読み取り本文中の認証用コードをサジェストする機能がありましたが、最近では、input 要素の autocomplete 属性に "one-time-code"と指定することで、サジェストが利用できるようになりました。Android や Windows、Mac の Chrome でも、WebOTP API という仕組みを利用することによって同様の体験を提供可能になっています。

HTML

<form>
  <input type="text" id="code" autocomplete="one-time-code"/>
  <button type="submit">sign in</button>
</form>

JavaScript

if ('OTPCredential' in window) {
  const input = document.getElementById('code');
  if (!input) return;
  const ac = new AbortController();
  const form = input.closest('form');
  if (form) {
    form.addEventListener('submit', e => {
      ac.abort();
    });
  }
  navigator.credentials.get({
    otp: { transport:['sms'] },
    signal: ac.signal
  }).then(otp => {
    input.value = otp.code;
  }).catch(err => {
    console.log(err);
  });
}

いずれのアプローチも、SMS 文中にドメインを記載することで、指定されたドメインでのみサジェストすることにより、フィッシングされにくい仕組みになっています。 WebOTP API および autocomplete="one-time-code" についての詳細はこちらの記事をご覧ください。

FIDO / WebAuthn #

FIDO / WebAuthn はハードウェア認証器で公開鍵暗号ペアを生成し、所持証明する認証方式です。特にスマートフォンが認証器の場合は、指紋センサーや顔識別といった生体認証と組み合わせて、一段階二要素認証を行うことができます。この際、サーバーには署名と生体認証が成功したという情報のみが送られるため、生体情報が盗まれる危険性はありません。

下記の図は FIDO / WebAuthn を行うサーバ/クライアントの構成図です。Client にある Authenticator は生体認証などを用いてユーザーの認証を行い、その結果に対して公開鍵暗号方式による署名を行います。また、署名作成に用いる秘密鍵を TEE (Trusted Execution Environment) などに安全に保管します。FIDO では FIDO を利用するサービス提供者などのことを RP と呼びますが、RP のアプリケーションは OS、Browser を通して Authenticator から取得した検証結果を Server に送信し、Server は検証結果の妥当性を検証することで認証を完了します。

詳しくはこちらの記事をご覧ください。

FIDO についてはデバイスの対応も進み、現在では下記のような対応状況となっています。

また、Yahoo! JAPAN ではこのうち、Android アプリ / Web、iOS アプリ / Web、Windows (Edge、Chrome、Firefox)、Mac (Safari、Chrome)で FIDO に対応しています。コンシューマー向けのサービスとしてはおおよそのデバイスで FIDO は使える状況と言えますので、パスワードレスを進める上で FIDO はとても良い選択肢だと考えています。

Yahoo! JAPAN ではユーザーが他の手段で認証後、FIDO / WebAuthn を登録していなければ、登録を推奨します。こうすることで、ユーザーが同じデバイスでログインする必要がある場合、例えば SMS 認証を繰り返すことなく、指紋認証だけですぐに認証することができ、ユーザー体験が向上します。

ただし、登録した生体認証は同じデバイスでしか利用できないため、ユーザーは新しいデバイスに移る度に別の手段で認証し、新しく生体認証を登録する必要があります。

パスワードレスの普及を段階的に進めるためには、その過程でパスワードから移行中のユーザーを含め、複数の認証手段をユーザーに提供する必要があります。複数の認証手段を提供すると、ユーザーによって認証手段の設定状態も違いますし、ブラウザによって使える認証手段も違います。さらには、前回の認証手段と同じ認証手段でのログインができるとユーザーにとっては良い体験となると思います。これらの要件を満たすため、前回認証に用いた認証手段が何であるか、Cookie などに情報を保持してクライアントに紐づけて管理したり、認証時に利用しているブラウザ / アプリを分析する必要があります。認証時はユーザーの設定状態、クライアントで前回行われた認証手段、最低限必要な認証のレベルなどから判断して適切な認証手段をユーザーに求めます。

2. パスワードの無効化 #

Yahoo! JAPAN ではパスワードの代替となる認証手段をユーザーに設定してもらった上でパスワードを無効化し、パスワードを使えないようにしています。パスワードの代替となる認証手段を設定するだけではなく、パスワードを使えなくすること（もしくはパスワードだけでサインイン出来なくすること）によって初めてリスト型攻撃への防御となります。

ここで問題となるのが、如何にユーザーにパスワードを無効化してもらうかということです。ユーザーにパスワードを無効化してもらえるよう、下記のような取り組みを行っています。

• ユーザーがパスワードを再設定する場面でパスワードの代替となる認証手段を訴求
• 頻度高く認証を求める場面で使いやすい認証手段（FIDO など）の設定とともにパスワードの無効化を訴求
• e コマースの決済のようなリスクの高いサービスを利用する前にパスワードの無効化を訴求

特にパスワードを忘れた場合、いわゆるアカウントリカバリをユーザーは行いますが、この際に以前であればパスワードを再設定していましたが、パスワード以外の認証手段も登録できるようにしており、これを推奨しています。

3. パスワードレスなアカウント登録 #

これが最もシンプルかつ効率的な対策です。アカウント作成時からパスワード不要のアカウントとして登録するのです。

Yahoo! JAPAN では SMS認 証をした上でまずSMSによるサインインが出来るアカウントとして登録をするようになっています。その後、任意で FIDOの 登録を出来るよう FIDO設定の訴求を行っています。FIDO はデバイスごとの設定であるためデバイスが利用できなくなってしまうとアカウントリカバリーが難しいため、まずは電話番号を登録し、その後に FIDO など他の認証手段の登録を求めています。

パスワードレスについての主な課題 #

パスワードという認証手段は人間の記憶に頼ったもので、デバイスに依存しない認証手段です。一方、パスワードレスへの取り組みとしてここまでに紹介した認証手段はデバイスに依存します。そのため、複数デバイスの間で同じアカウントを使うケースや、デバイスを失ったケースにおいて課題を抱えています。

複数デバイスに関する課題の具体例を紹介します。複数デバイスに関する課題は主にユーザビリティに関わるもので、下記のようなものがあります。

• SMS 認証を利用する際、PCを利用しているときにスマートフォンに届く SMS を閲覧する必要があり、面倒である
• FIDO で、特に Platform Authenticator と呼ばれる OS などに紐付いた Authenticator を使う場合、ユーザーが複数のデバイスを利用すると登録していないデバイスでは FIDO による認証が行えず、デバイスごとに登録する必要がある

デバイスを失ったケースの課題の具体例としては下記のようなものがあります。

• 電話番号の回線を契約解除すると登録された電話番号への SMS の送信ができなくなる
• FIDO は秘密鍵をデバイスに保管する方式であり、当然デバイスを失うと発行した秘密鍵は利用できなくなる

パスワードレスの推進においてこれらの課題は重要なトピックで、Yahoo! JAPAN でもいろいろな取組をしています。

シンプルかつ最も重要な解決手段として、複数の認証手段を登録してもらうというやり方があります。これはデバイスを紛失するなどといった事態に備えた取り組みであり、デバイスごとでの最適な認証手段の設定でもあります。FIDO の鍵はデバイスに依存するので、複数のデバイスで FIDO の秘密鍵を登録することも良いやり方です。

他にも、WebOTP API を使うことで SMS の届く Android から PC の Chrome に SMS 内にある確認コードを受け渡すこともできます。詳しくはこちらの記事をご覧ください。また、最近では Apple が PassKeys という機能を発表しています。この機能は iCloud KeyChain を用いることで、デバイスに保存された秘密鍵を同じApple ID で Sign In しているデバイス間で共有し、デバイスごとの登録を不要にするものです（その後 Google、Microsoft と同名のプロジェクトを共同で推進することを発表）。なお、FIDO アライアンスもアカウントリカバリに関する課題を重要視しておりホワイトペーパーを発行しています。

これらの課題に対する取り組みはパスワードレスの拡大に伴って、更に重要なトピックとなっていくと考えています。

パスワードレスの推進 #

これらのパスワードレスへの取り組みを Yahoo! JAPAN は 2015 年頃より進めてきました。2015 年 5 月の FIDO サーバーの認定取得を始めとして、そこから SMS 認証の導入や、パスワード無効化機能の提供、各デバイスでの FIDO 対応などを順次進めて来ました。いまでは月間アクティブユーザーのうち、3,000 万を超えるユーザーがパスワードを無効化済みで、パスワード以外の認証手段を用いています。Yahoo! JAPAN での FIDO への対応は Android ブラウザ（Chrome）から始まり、いまでは FIDO の設定したユーザーは 1,000 万を超えています。

この取組の成果として、ログイン ID / パスワードを忘れたという問い合わせについて、最も多かった時期から比べて、全体に占める割合が25%も減少しましたし、不正アクセスについても、パスワードレスのアカウントが増えることにより減少することが確認できています。

特に FIDO は設定も簡単なため、その設定 CVR も高くなっています。実際に、Yahoo! JAPANでは前述の SMS 認証などより CVR が高いことがわかっています。また、FIDO については SMS認証に比べ認証時の成功率が高いこと、また認証にかかる時間についても平均速度が速く中央値も最も速いことがわかっています。なお、パスワードについては認証時間が短いグループもいることがわかっており、これはブラウザの autocomplete="current-password" によるものではないかと考えています。

25 _%

ログイン ID / パスワード忘れの問い合わせの削減

74 _%

FIDO での認証成功率

65 _%

SMS 認証での認証成功率

パスワードレスを進める上で一番難しいことは、認証手段の追加ではなく、その利用を如何に普及させるかというところです。パスワードレスによるサービス利用の体験が良く、またユーザーにとって合理的でなければなかなか移行は進みませんので、ユーザビリティを高めることで結果としてユーザーのセキュリティ向上を実現させる必要があり、これらはサービスによって独自の工夫が必要になると考えています。

まとめ #

今回は Yahoo! JAPAN のパスワードレスへの取り組みを紹介させていただきました。パスワードによる認証はセキュリティ面のリスクもあり、またユーザビリティの点でも課題を抱えています。その上、現在は、Web OTP API や FIDO など、パスワード以外での認証を支える技術も普及してきていますので、パスワードレスの取り組みを始めるべき時期と言えます。Yahoo! JAPAN では、このパスワードレスの取り組みにより、ユーザビリティ、セキュリティ双方の効果が確実に出ています。ただ、まだ多くのユーザーがパスワードを使用されておりますので、引き続きパスワードレスな認証手段の利用を拡大させていきます。また、パスワードレスな認証手段にプロダクトのユーザー体験を最適化するよう、プロダクトの改善も続けていきたいと考えています。

Photo by olieman.eth on Unsplash

Over the years, there were many attacks on user accounts and issues that led to lost account access. Most of these issues were related to password usage for authentication.

With recent advances in authentication technology, Yahoo! JAPAN has decided to move from password-based to passwordless authentication.

Why passwordless? #

As Yahoo! JAPAN offers e-commerce and other money-related services, there's a risk of significant damage to users in the event of unauthorized access or account loss.

The most common attacks related to passwords were password list attacks and phishing scams. One of the reasons why password list attacks are common and effective is many people's habit of using the same password for multiple applications and websites.

The following figures are the results of a survey conducted by Yahoo! JAPAN.

50 _%

use the same ID and password on six or more sites

60 _%

Use the same password across multiple sites

70 _%

use a password as the primary way to login

Users often forget their passwords, which accounted for the majority of password-related inquiries. There were also inquiries from users who had forgotten their login IDs in addition to their passwords. At their peak, these inquiries accounted for more than a third of all account-related inquiries.

By going passwordless, Yahoo! JAPAN aimed to improve not only security, but also usability, without placing any extra burden on users.

From a security perspective, eliminating passwords from the user authentication process reduces the damage from list-based attacks, and from a usability perspective, providing an authentication method that does not rely on remembering passwords prevents situations where a user is unable to login because they forgot their password.

Yahoo! JAPAN's passwordless initiatives #

Yahoo! JAPAN is taking a number of steps to promote passwordless authentication, which can be broadly divided into three categories:

1. Provide an alternative means of authentication to passwords.
2. Password deactivation.
3. Passwordless account registration.

The first two initiatives aimed at existing users, while passwordless registration is aimed at new users.

1. Providing an alternative means of authentication to passwords #

Yahoo! JAPAN offers the following alternatives to passwords.

1. SMS authentication
2. FIDO with WebAuthn

In addition, we also offer authentication methods such as e-mail authentication, password combined with SMS OTP (one time password), and password combined with email OTP.

SMS authentication #

SMS authentication is a system which allows a registered user to receive a six-digit authentication code through SMS. Once the user receives the SMS, they can enter the authentication code in the app or website.

Apple has long allowed iOS to read SMS messages and suggest authentication codes from the text body. Recently, it's become possible to use suggestions by specifying "one-time-code" in the autocomplete attribute of the input element. Chrome on Android, Windows, and Mac can provide the same experience using the WebOTP API.

For example:

<form>
  <input type="text" id="code" autocomplete="one-time-code"/>
  <button type="submit">sign in</button>
</form>

if ('OTPCredential' in window) {
  const input = document.getElementById('code');
  if (!input) return;
  const ac = new AbortController();
  const form = input.closest('form');
  if (form) {
    form.addEventListener('submit', e => {
      ac.abort();
    });
  }
  navigator.credentials.get({
    otp: { transport:['sms'] },
    signal: ac.signal
  }).then(otp => {
    input.value = otp.code;
  }).catch(err => {
    console.log(err);
  });
}

Both approaches are designed to prevent phishing by including the domain in the SMS body and providing suggestions only for the specified domain.

For more information about the WebOTP API and autocomplete="one-time-code", check out SMS OTP form best practices.

FIDO with WebAuthn #

FIDO with WebAuthn uses a hardware authenticator to generate a public key cipher pair and prove possession. When a smartphone is used as the authenticator, it can be combined with biometric authentication (such as fingerprint sensors or facial recognition) to perform one-step two-factor authentication. In this case, only the signature and the success indication from the biometric authentication are sent to the server, so there is no risk of biometric data theft.

The following diagram shows the server-client configuration for FIDO. The client authenticator authenticates the user with biometrics and signs the result using public key cryptography. The private key used to create the signature is securely stored in a TEE (Trusted Execution Environment) or similar location. A service provider that uses FIDO is called an RP (relying party).

For more information, read authentication guidelines from the FIDO Alliance.

Yahoo! JAPAN supports FIDO on Android (mobile app and web), iOS (mobile app and web), Windows (Edge, Chrome, Firefox), and macOS (Safari, Chrome). As a consumer service, FIDO can be used on almost any device, which makes it a good option for promoting passwordless authentication.

Yahoo! JAPAN recommends that users register for FIDO with WebAuthn, if they've not already authenticated through other means. When a user needs to log in with the same device, they can quickly authenticate using a biometric sensor.

Users must set up FIDO authentication with all devices they use to log in to Yahoo! JAPAN.

To promote passwordless authentication and be considerate of users who are transitioning away from passwords, we provide multiple means of authentication. This means that different users can have different authentication method settings, and the authentication methods they can use may differ from browser to browser. We believe it's a better experience if users log in using the same authentication method each time.

To meet these requirements, it's necessary to track previous authentication methods and link this information to the client by storing it in the form of cookies, etc. We can then analyze how different browsers and applications are used for authentication. The user is asked to provide appropriate authentication based on the user's settings, the previous authentication methods used, and the minimum level of authentication required.

2. Password deactivation #

Yahoo! JAPAN asks users to set up an alternative authentication method and then disable their password so that it cannot be used. In addition to setting up alternative authentication, disabling password authentication (therefore making it impossible to sign in with only a password) helps protect users from list-based attacks.

We've taken the following steps to encourage users to disable their passwords.

• Promoting alternative authentication methods when users reset their passwords.
• Encouraging users to set up easy-to-use authentication methods (such as FIDO) and disable passwords for situations that require frequent authentication.
• Urging users to disable their passwords before using high-risk services, such as e-commerce payments.

If a user forgets their password, they can run an account recovery. Previously this involved a password reset. Now, users can choose to set up a different authentication method, and we encourage them to do so.

3. Passwordless account registration #

New users can create password-free Yahoo! JAPAN accounts. Users are first required to register with an SMS authentication. Once they've logged in, we encourage the user to set up FIDO authentication.

Since FIDO is a per-device setting, it can be difficult to recover an account, should the device become inoperable. Therefore, we require users to keep their phone number registered, even after they've set up additional authentication.

Key challenges for passwordless authentication #

Passwords rely on human memory and are device-independent. On the other hand, the authentication methods introduced thus far in our passwordless initiative are device-dependent. This poses several challenges.

When multiple devices are used, there are some issues related to usability:

• When using SMS authentication to log in from a PC, users must check their mobile phone for incoming SMS messages. This may be inconvenient, as it requires the user's phone to be available and easy to access at any time.
• With FIDO, especially with platform authenticators, a user with multiple devices will be unable to authenticate on unregistered devices. Registration must be completed for each device they intend to use.

FIDO authentication is tied to specific devices, which requires they remain in the user's possession and active.

• If the service contract is canceled, it will no longer be possible to send SMS messages to the registered phone number.
• FIDO stores private keys on a specific device. If the device is lost, those keys are unusable.

Yahoo! JAPAN is taking various steps to address these problems.

The most important solution is to encourage users to set up multiple authentication methods. This provides alternative account access when devices are lost. Since FIDO keys are device-dependent, it is also good practice to register FIDO private keys on multiple devices.

Alternatively, users can use the WebOTP API to pass SMS verification codes from an Android phone to Chrome on a PC.

We believe that addressing these issues will become even more important as passwordless authentication spreads.

Promoting passwordless authentication #

Yahoo! JAPAN has been working on these passwordless initiatives since 2015. This began with the acquisition of FIDO server certification in May 2015, followed by the introduction of SMS authentication, a password deactivation feature, and FIDO support for each device.

Today, more than 30 million monthly active users have already disabled their passwords and are using non-password authentication methods. Yahoo! JAPAN's support for FIDO started with Chrome on Android, and now more than 10 million users have set up FIDO authentication.

As a result of Yahoo! JAPAN's initiatives, the percentage of inquiries involving forgotten login IDs or passwords has decreased by 25% compared to the period when the number of such inquiries was at its highest, and we have also been able to confirm that unauthorized access has declined as a result of the increase in the number of passwordless accounts.

Since FIDO is so easy to set up, it has a particularly high conversion rate. In fact, Yahoo! JAPAN has found that FIDO has a higher CVR than SMS authentication.

25 _%

Decrease in requests for forgotten credentials

74 _%

Users succeed with FIDO authentication

65 _%

Succeed with SMS verification

FIDO has a higher success rate than SMS authentication, and faster average and median authentication times. As for passwords, some groups have short authentication times, and we suspect that this is due to the browser's autocomplete="current-password".

The greatest difficulty for offering passwordless accounts is not the addition of authentication methods, but popularizing the use of authenticators. If the experience of using a passwordless service is not user-friendly, the transition will not be easy.

We believe that to achieve improved security we must first improve usability, which will require unique innovations for each service.

Conclusion #

Password authentication is risky in terms of security, and it also poses challenges in terms of usability. Now that technologies supporting non-password authentication, such as WebOTP API and FIDO, are more widely available, it's time to start working toward passwordless authentication.

At Yahoo! JAPAN, taking this approach has had a definite effect on both usability and security. However, many users are still using passwords, so we will continue to encourage more users to switch to passwordless authentication methods. We will also continue improving our products to optimize the user experience for passwordless authentication methods.

Photo by olieman.eth on Unsplash

Our platform reaches over 100 million people monthly in the U.S. alone. The company was founded on the belief that the open web needs to perform at the highest levels of consumer expectations to thrive, and the standards set by Google's Core Web Vitals align with this user-first vision.

For more than a decade, our global team has been engineering a CMS that creates positive and intuitive user experiences that translate into meaningful business. Core Web Vitals are a benchmark that ensure this symbiotic loop continues across every new site we power.

Why prioritizing performance means better business #

Many publishers doubt whether excellent scores on Core Web Vitals are worth the effort. They also worry that even a quality user experience won't deliver the boost in readership they need. Fortunately, our prioritization of performance at RebelMouse has given us the data to prove that Core Web Vitals are an excellent way to generate new traffic and build the user loyalty needed to have a successful business.

In order to illustrate this, we analyzed the audience behavior of a number of sites we power, both before and after we optimized for high performance scores on Core Web Vitals. In particular, we defined types of users to separate the audiences into the following key categories:

• New Visitors: Users who visited a site for the first time.
• Returning Visitors: Users who had at least two sessions.
• Loyal Visitors: Users who had at least three sessions or more.
• Fans: Users who had at least four sessions or more.
• Superfans: Users who had at least five sessions or more.

References:

• https://www.hotjar.com/google-analytics/glossary/users
• https://databox.com/new-vs-returning-visitors

The data from the field, gathered by Google Analytics, was overwhelmingly clear. When focusing on loyal visitors, fans, and superfans categories, we found that users are far more likely to stay longer, consume more content, and return more often on sites that receive excellent marks on their Core Web Vitals. Here's a look at some prominent examples:

But content consumption and time spent per user weren't the only metrics to spike. The number of users visiting and pages accessed also increased among the same categories:

From normal to high-performing: How RebelMouse transforms websites #

The good news is that performing well on Core Web Vitals is possible with thoughtful, strategic changes made to your site's codebase. Here are a few ways RebelMouse powers high-performing websites:

Progressive web app #

RebelMouse optimizes all third-party calls in a progressive web app that delivers the most important content first, and then sequences the rest of the calls as the reader needs to see them.

We have a method that loads JavaScript immediately after the Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) event has completed. We give our users the option to load JavaScript through three different priority levels:

• Optimized is best for users who want the latest cutting-edge approaches. We use it in our own development work. This priority level will pause JavaScript from firing until well after the page has fully loaded, which gives you the highest performance.
• Load Blocking is used for executing JavaScript right away, and will generally have a negative impact on your performance scores. This priority level will fire the JavaScript immediately after the page has completed loading. This has the potential to drop your performance scores by 10–40 points depending on the extra call.
• Post LCP is the best option to blend great performance scores with a very fast load. This priority level will cause JavaScript to load immediately after the Largest Contentful Paint event has completed. (This is recommended for ads only, where you have increased revenue in delivering ads to users who are only on the page for five seconds or so.)

Optimize social embeds #

To protect Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) and LCP scores, all social embeds need to be set to lazy load.

For CLS preservation, you have to dynamically find the size of the embed with server-side technology, and insert it into your own storage of the properties of that embed. Then, the embed needs to be delivered to your front end to prevent the layout from shifting upon load. For those with interest in deeper dives on this topic, we have posts specifically on Twitter and TikTok examples with more details.

Ultra-light, smart HTML and CSS #

Site HTML and CSS has to be constructed in a way that allows for the delivery of above-the-fold images and text to preload before the rest of the page.

• Bad HTML constructs will force the browser to process many unnecessary site elements that are below the fold in order to render what is above the fold in the first viewport.
• We have more in-depth articles on how we achieve this on RebelMouse here:
  • A breakdown on how to improve Core Web Vitals.
  • A full guide on implementing fast page speeds while also including third-party scripts.
  • An in-depth guide on optimizing for LCP.

Publish with a performance-first mindset #

Since the rollout of Core Web Vitals, developers have felt the impact of how their publishing platforms stack up against Google's recommended thresholds.

HTTP Archive, an open-source project that identifies trends and records historical patterns across millions of URLs, has revealed how top content management systems perform against Google's page experience standards in its Core Web Vitals Technology Report. RebelMouse has consistently outperformed major CMS platforms on Google's most critical metrics since its rollout and into 2022:

Performance without compromise #

Creating quality content is now only half the battle for publishers and brands alike. Quality content must be supported by modern technology that can keep up with the speed and standards of today's web. We're able to deliver Core Web Vitals that make the grade because site performance isn't just a goal, it's a company pillar that's woven into our culture. We use our intense focus on performance to help our clients make the most of the open web by growing traffic and building revenue without sacrificing user experience.

If you'd like to learn more about how we can help your site exceed the industry standard on Core Web Vitals, click here to learn more about RebelMouse today.

Why PWA? #

Progressive Web Apps leverage what the modern web can do. They are installable on your device, load quickly, with subsequent visits loading instantly. They respond to input quickly. They work well on an unreliable connection or when offline. PWAs use modern APIs to provide an engaging app-like experience with an optional full screen UI, background updating, and offline access to data.

To enhance a web app into a Progressive Web App requires adding two artifacts:

• A web app manifest: a JSON configuration file that defines the app's entry point URL, the icon used to represent the PWA and other configuration that describe how the application looks and behaves.
• A service worker: a script that provides background services that enrich your PWA by defining resources your PWA uses and the strategies to access them.

What is a service worker? #

At its core, a service worker is just a script that your browser runs independently as you interact with your web application. An active service worker provides services such as smart caching using the Cache API, keeping data up to date using the Background Sync API, and integrating with push notifications. A service worker with the right caching strategy provides stable and reliable user experiences for various scenarios, returning pre-cached resources instantly, storing data in cache, and updating resources when connected to the web.

Service workers can be hard to write from scratch. Workbox was created to make it easier. Workbox is a set of libraries to help you write and manage service workers and caching with the Cache Storage API. Service workers and the Cache Storage API, when used together, control how assets (HTML, CSS, JS, images, etc.) are requested from the network or cache, even allowing you to return cached content when offline. With Workbox, you can quickly set up and manage both, and more, with production-ready code.

Upgrading an AEM site to a PWA #

Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) is a comprehensive content management solution for building websites, mobile apps, forms, and digital signage. It makes it easy to manage your marketing content and assets.

While AEM provides a rich library for building web applications, until now it's been difficult to build a PWA by adding a service worker and a manifest.

Adobe Experience Manager Sites is the UI building tool that is part of Adobe Experience Manager. When used with Adobe Experience Manager as a cloud service, AEM Sites makes it easy to convert any existing AEM website or single page application into an installable offline-enabled Progressive Web App with just configuration and no coding. It uses Workbox to deliver the best practices for Progressive Web Apps and abstracts the complexities of writing boilerplate manifests and service workers.

AEM supports localization of content which means you can have different branding and even different offline content for different locales. To do this build different PWA configurations for each language master.

Getting started with PWA configuration on AEM #

Log into Adobe Experience Manager as a Cloud Service and select any Adobe Experience Manager Sites page or language master and click properties. You should see a tab called Progressive Web App. (Note: if you do not see this tab, please contact Adobe to enable this feature.) You can configure the installation and the look and feel of your Progressive Web Apps with just a few clicks.

If you've completed AEM Sites tutorials you have likely seen the WKND site before. This article uses the WKND demo as the starting point. When you are done you will have updated WKND from a web app to a PWA using WorkBox.

Configure the manifest #

The web app manifest is a JSON file that contains properties that describe the look and behavior of a PWA. Adobe Experience Manager Sites provides a friendly user interface to configure the properties.

{
  "name": "WKND Adventures and Travel",
  "short_name": "WKND Adventures and Travel",
  "start_url": "/content/wknd/us/en.html",
  "display": "standalone",
  "theme_color": "#FFDC00",
  "background_color": "#FF851B",
  "orientation": "any",
  "icons": [
    {
      "src": "/content/dam/wknd/pwa-logo.png",
      "type": "image/png",
      "sizes": "512x512",
      "purpose": "any maskable"
    }
  ]
}

The start URL can be different from the default landing page for your domain. By changing the start_url parameter, you can send your users directly to the application experience rather than the default page a non-authenticated or new user would be presented. This provides PWA users with a smoother, more app-like experience.

AEM understands that different locales can have a different look and feel. You can configure different properties, colors, and icons for different locales or languages and then synchronize the configuration with the linked pages.

Once the PWA is accessed on the browser, you can right click and inspect to bring up DevTools and view the manifest under the Applications panel.

Configure the service worker #

You can configure the content to cache and the caching strategy to use.

If you have been using service workers you may be familiar with caching strategies. Caching strategies specify which resources to cache and whether to look for those resources in the cache first, the network first, or in the cache with a network fallback. You can then choose the resources to pre-cache when the service worker is installed. AEM Application service workers implement a warm cache strategy which means user's experience will not break even if you specify a missing or broken path.

In AEM, the term "clientlibs" refers to client-side Libraries: the combination of related JavaScript, CSS, and static resources that have been added to your project that are served to and utilized by the client web browser. You can easily set your client-side libraries to be used offline by specifying those libraries in the user interface.

You can also include third-party resources such as fonts. This offline cache configuration provides configuration information to a service worker that is generated for your application that internally uses workbox. That is pretty much all there is to make your application installable. Once installed, the application icon will show up on your mobile device home screen just like a platform app. Clicking the icon will access the wknd site.

Please note that you can change your content or these settings at any time. When you publish your changes, the service worker will be updated at the client by the browser and a message will be presented to the user that a newer version of the PWA is available. The user can click the message to reload the application and get the latest updates. You can open the browser developer tools and applications panel to view the service worker details.

You can expand cache storage to view the content that has been cached locally:

The results #