Issue #21—The ethics of web performance, HTTP/3, faster promises and async functions, Google Lighthouse 4.0 and more!

        12 February 2019

#### PerformanceNewsletter

#### Issue 21

#### Editor’s Note

**Last year was huge for Calibre. **Since starting in 2017 we’ve seen more and more teams choosing our platform to test and monitor hundreds of thousands of pages. 

At the end of 2018, [we released support for Lighthouse 4](https://calibreapp.com/blog/release-notes-lighthouse-4/), as well as huge improvements to the reliability of our metrics. If you haven’t checked it out yet, the [announcement post](https://calibreapp.com/blog/release-notes-lighthouse-4/) is a good place to start.

In January, [Michael Dijkstra](https://twitter.com/micdijkstra) [joined the team](https://calibreapp.com/about) as a Platform Engineer. He’s already building fantastic new performance tools that you’ll be seeing soon.

**This also means we are able to put more energy into creating resources and guidelines (including this newsletter!)** to continue our mission of helping organisations on their journey to effective performance and user experience improvements.

We’re starting to work on a comprehensive web performance guide—if you’re interested, [sign up for the early access list here →](https://mailchi.mp/1d7e11e7dfb5/performance-guide)
— Ben

#### INSIDE LOOK

## Improving web performance at Mapbox

We sat down with [Eli Fitch](https://twitter.com/EliFitch) to learn how his team are striving to keep Studio, Mapbox's flagship mapping software, running fast and smooth. Eli goes into the nitty-gritty engineering details as well as describes how they started estabilishing a performance culture.

[web performance at mapbox →](https://calibreapp.com/blog/performance-at-mapbox/)

#### article

## A speed boost for async functions and promises

Thanks to tireless work of [developers](https://twitter.com/MayaLekova) [working](https://twitter.com/bmeurer) on the V8 engine we can now enjoy speed gains when using async/await and native promises. It’s also now easier to debug asynchronous code in Chrome DevTools, too!
[Faster async functions and promises →](https://v8.dev/blog/fast-async)

#### article

## Is web performance a moral concern?

A fantastic primer by [Tim Kadlec](https://twitter.com/tkadlec) pointing out the ethical implications of poor performance. Rapidly growing energy consumption and rampant exclusion aren’t new to the tech industry but weren’t often treated as ramifications of subpar performance practices. A must read.

[The ethics of web performance →](https://timkadlec.com/remembers/2019-01-09-the-ethics-of-performance/)

#### article

## HTTP/3 is on the horizon

You might be knee-deep in trying to catch up with HTTP/2 and here we are, discussing brand new HTTP/3 (or previously called HTTP-over-QUIC) protocol. In his article, [Lucas Parde](https://twitter.com/SimmerVigor) dives into the history of HTTP specifications and standardisation process. Fascinating!

[http/3: From root to tip →](https://blog.cloudflare.com/http-3-from-root-to-tip/)

#### tools

## Google Lighthouse 4.0 is out

Our favourite performance and user experience auditing tool just received a huge upgrade. Lighthouse now has a brand new Progressive Web App scoring section, more accurate metric descriptions and dozens of other improvements and bug fixes (psst, did you know that [you can test with the latest version of Lighthouse in Calibre](https://calibreapp.com/)?).

[LIGHTHOUSE 4.0 changelog →](https://github.com/GoogleChrome/lighthouse/releases/tag/v4.0.0)

#### Spread the word about perf.email

We’d love to see more people reading
                              [perf.email](https://perf.email/); if you’d like to help—forward this email to a friend, tweet, or shout from a rooftop.
                                It goes a long way. ✌🏻

#### Brought to you by

                              ♠ [Calibre](https://calibreapp.com/). Make the web fast for everyone.

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