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4 October 2023

⚡ 136: Low-quality image placeholders for performance

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Performance Newsletter
[issue 136 ]()
 
#### Editor’s note
 
It’s not uncommon to see impressive promises of fast performance. From products to frameworks, everything is blazing fast. Except it isn’t.
 
I’ve always been sceptical, but especially with performance, I’m driven by data-backed facts, but also proven, accessible and inclusive user experience. There have been many cases where what was promised to be fast, ended up slow, sacrificing UX and wasting teams’ time. A worthy critique is this issues’ “Why not React?” article.
 
Take performance statements with a grain of salt, and test, test, test.
 
Karolina
 
 
 
 
#### What’s Performance newsletter?
 

Performance Newsletter is a fortnightly mailing by [Calibre](https://calibreapp.com), featuring web performance tools, talks and resources.

Don’t worry—we don’t spam. If you’d like to leave, [unsubscribe]() at any time. Suggest content [here. ](mailto:[email protected])

 
 
 
# Articles  
 
Screenshots of Harry's website showing the progression of choosing the LCP element
 
### [The ultimate low-quality image placeholder technique](https://csswizardry.com/2023/09/the-ultimate-lqip-lcp-technique/)
 
[Harry Roberts](https://csswizardry.com/)
Learn how to use low-quality image placeholders to limit the jarring effect of slower loading, high-res imagery.
 
Diagram showing non-initial page views with smarter caching
 
### [Your cache headers could probably be more aggressive](https://www.macarthur.me/posts/more-aggressive-cache-headers)
 
[Alex MacArthur](https://www.macarthur.me/)
Cache is often one of the set and forget preferences. Is there a way to tailor our cache settings to push performance even further?
 
Code example
 
### [Speeding up the JavaScript ecosystem: polyfills gone rogue](https://marvinh.dev/blog/speeding-up-javascript-ecosystem-part-6/)
 
[Marvin Hagemeister](https://marvinh.dev/)
Many popular npm packages depend on 6-8x more packages than they need to. Find out which packages are affected and how to investigate dependencies further.
 
### [Why not React?](https://dev.to/tigt/why-not-react-2f8l)
 
[Taylor Hunt](https://ti.gt/)

A critical look at whether React can be made performant and what questions remain unanswered about the frameworks’ feasibility as one of the go-to’s for teams.
 

 
 
 
# Case Studies  
 
Illustration featuring 5 colorful computers with lines going out of them into a cube and then a cloud above it.
 
### [Keeping Figma fast](https://www.figma.com/blog/keeping-figma-fast/)
 
[Slava Kim](https://slv.io/) & [Laurel Woods](https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurelwoods/)
Find out how Figma went from a single MacBook stress-testing their product to scaling web performance to suit a much bigger, remote organisation.
 
 
# New in Calibre  
 
Terminal window with a command to run a performance test and an example markdown output
### [Run performance tests in CI/CD with one command](https://calibreapp.com/changelog#08-cli-5-1-0)
We updated our CLI to easily compare performance between preview deployments and production. You can also now fail checks on performance budgets and enjoy a better markdown report for one-off tests!
 
 
Calibre
 
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