Performance Chat Summary: 28 May 2024

The full chat log is available beginning here on Slack.

Announcements

  • Welcome to our new members of #core-performance
  • Performance Lab 3.2.0 release date is June 6, 2024
  • WordPress 6.6 betaBeta A pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process. 1 is scheduled for Tuesday June 4

Priority Items

Structure:

  • WordPress performance TracTrac An open source project by Edgewall Software that serves as a bug tracker and project management tool for WordPress. tickets
    • Current release (WP 6.6)
  • Performance Lab pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party (and other performance plugins)
    • Auto-Sizes for Lazy-Loaded Images
    • Embed Optimizer
    • Fetchpriority
    • Image Placeholders
    • Modern Image Formats
    • Optimization Detective
    • Performant Translations
    • Speculative Loading
  • Active priority projects
    • Improve template loading
    • INP research opportunities
    • Improving the calculation of image size attributes
    • Optimized autoloaded options

WordPress Performance Trac Tickets

  • WordPress 6.6 enhancement tickets:
    • @adamsilverstein to test #53167 and aim to get it in beta 1
    • For #57789 @thekt12 added persistent cache to  get_theme_data . Yet to run it with existing unit testunit test Code written to test a small piece of code or functionality within a larger application. Everything from themes to WordPress core have a series of unit tests. Also see regression. and take performance result. He will add a PR today for testing add it today for testing. Currently he is adding some last changes to https://github.com/WordPress/wordpress-develop/pull/6392 which will fix some unit test
    • @thekt12 has updated #59595 with https://github.com/WordPress/wordpress-develop/pull/6392 with the review changes. Suggest changes weren’t working fully as $metadata[‘name’] was not present for all the block_nodes so updated it even further. Also identified repetitive code in old function which is fixed
    • @mukesh27 has #61276 ready for review, it has lots of testing on this one
      • @johnbillion I think we already have a few site health checks that aren’t particularly actionable by an end user, so this shouldn’t be a blockerblocker A bug which is so severe that it blocks a release., but definitely something to consider
      • @joemcgill In the Performance Lab plugin, we include a way for end users to review the specific options that are being flagged and allow them to turn off autoloading for them. Still unsure if that functionality is ready for all end users, but the fact that this site health check can be enhanced with specific additional details is a nice starting point. We can always adjust the copy during betas as well. I think we’ll likely get more feedback once the Dev Notedev note Each important change in WordPress Core is documented in a developers note, (usually called dev note). Good dev notes generally include a description of the change, the decision that led to this change, and a description of how developers are supposed to work with that change. Dev notes are published on Make/Core blog during the beta phase of WordPress release cycle. Publishing dev notes is particularly important when plugin/theme authors and WordPress developers need to be aware of those changes.In general, all dev notes are compiled into a Field Guide at the beginning of the release candidate phase. for #42441 is published. Pairing the health check with this improvement seems like a nice affordance

Performance Lab Plugin (and other Performance Plugins)

  • @westonruter suggested moving the 3.2.0 performance lab plugin release date to June 6 to accommodate the newest designs for the new icons
  • @stellastopfer provided an update on the new Performance Lab icon set, and advised that option 2 is being voted the best set of icons
  • @westonruter On this note… For the onboarding experience I think timing is great to coincide with WP 6.5.4 to introduce redirection to the Performance screen when activating the plugin
  • Decision agreed to move Performance Lab plugin 3.2.0 release until after the WordPress 6.5.4 release on June 5
  • We have the first Performance Lab repo bugbug A bug is an error or unexpected result. Performance improvements, code optimization, and are considered enhancements, not defects. After feature freeze, only bugs are dealt with, with regressions (adverse changes from the previous version) being the highest priority. scrub on Wednesday May 29
  • @westonruter Modern Image formats is close to wrapping a couple of PRs for merge – this ticket in particular by @adamsilverstein
  • @westonruter is etting very close to finishing the Optimization Detective refactor/extraction into Image Prioritizer dependent plugin

Active Priority Projects

  • @stellastopfer We now also have one project board that should cover all current and upcoming work. The board is still a bit of a WIP, but should get its final shape over the course of the next couple of weeks.
    • Hopefully, it will serve our team just as well as some of you lurkers out there, so you can get an idea on features added to upcoming releases, bug fixes and other improvements, but also discuss and contribute where you see an opportunity to do so.
    • The first next step would be to add all of the issues that are in progress, but aren’t there. Then we will triagetriage The act of evaluating and sorting bug reports, in order to decide priority, severity, and other factors. and align on labels. I think there are some we can do without and others we can simplify.
    • If you click on the arrow in the tab, and go to Slice by > Milestone, it will open a sidebarSidebar A sidebar in WordPress is referred to a widget-ready area used by WordPress themes to display information that is not a part of the main content. It is not always a vertical column on the side. It can be a horizontal rectangle below or above the content area, footer, header, or any where in the theme.. There you can choose the milestone you want to see card for and they will filterFilter Filters are one of the two types of Hooks https://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/Hooks. They provide a way for functions to modify data of other functions. They are the counterpart to Actions. Unlike Actions, filters are meant to work in an isolated manner, and should never have side effects such as affecting global variables and output. on the right.
    • Only one milestone at a time. We could create a filter by due date. That would cover multiple
  • @joemcgill suggested we’ll probably need some follow-up or some documentation on how we want to use the board (best practices, tips, that sort of thing), but this is an amazing start and should help us organize visibility of our work much better.

Improving the calculation of image size attributes

  • @mukesh27 has been working on improved image sizes algorithm. And asked @joemcgill to please review it when you have moment.
    • PR that ready for review:
      • PR #1250 – Initial implementation of improved image sizes algorithm
      • PR #1252 – Use correct sizes for small images

Open Floor

Our next chat will be held on Tuesday, June 4, 2024 at 15:00 UTC in the #core-performance channel in Slack.

#core-performance, #performance, #performance-chat, #summary