Performance Chat Summary: 25 June 2024

Meeting agenda here and the full chat log is available beginning here on Slack.

Announcements

Welcome to our new members of #core-performance
Early WordPress 6.6 Beta 2 performance results [GitHub issue]

Priority Items

WordPress performance Trac tickets
- Current release (WP 6.6) [Trac tickets]
Performance Lab plugin (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

Table of Contents

Toggle

WordPress Performance Trac Tickets

Last 2 performance tickets for 6.6 #59595 (merged) and #59600 (punted)

Performance Lab Plugin (and other Performance Plugins)

Performance Lab plugin and the following performance plugins:

@thelovekesh added testing steps on https://github.com/WordPress/performance/pull/1247 which is ongoing PR for adding Web Worker Offloading plugin. As per last discussion on merging it in trunk, this PR is ready for that
@westonruter hopes to pick up Web Worker Offloading next week
@mukesh27 the Extend core’s Autoloaded Options Site Health test if present (in WP 6.6) is merged
@mukesh27 opened a couple issues related to Modern Images Formats and the implementation of the picture element. Those are up for grabs for anyone wanting to contribute
- https://github.com/WordPress/performance/issues/1315
- https://github.com/WordPress/performance/issues/1316
@westonruter Related to that, I found a downside to using the picture element in the first place, in that it is not currently possible to add fetchpriority=high preload links for picture elements since the link tag doesn’t replicate all of the picture element’s sourcing features: https://github.com/WordPress/performance/issues/1312
- @joemcgill Does adding fetchpriority directly to the image not work in this case?
- @westonruter Yes that does, but the problem occurs when there are varying LCP elements for different breakpoints. So Image Prioritizer will need to explicitly avoid adding a preload link when the LCP element is a picture.
- @joemcgill I would think that picture would make that easier, because each source would have it’s own media attribute
- @westonruter Otherwise, it adds preload links for the LCP element in each breakpoint. The problem with the picture element is the type not the media.
  - Unless, would a browser skip requesting a preload link for an image when it has a type that is not supported? I didn’t think it did. But I’ll need to check that
@westonruter Related to Image Prioritizer, I’ve opened several other issues for enhancement ideas on top of Optimization Detective.

Active Priority Projects

Improving the calculation of image size attributes

@mukesh27 We have some good progress on this project, The Use correct sizes for small images PR is ready for final review and merge. Once it merge i will working on blocked PR improved image sizes for left/right/center alignment.
- @joemcgill I just saw your update to the PR and will review again today. I think we’re on good track to have a first version ready for the next PL release date

Optimized Autoloaded Options

The dev note has now been psoted https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/06/18/options-api-disabling-autoload-for-large-options/

Improved template loading

@thekt12 I am working on review from @joemcgill here –
https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/62794/files
@joemcgill #59600 and #57789 have a lot of overlap and the former is mostly irrelevant at this point. We fixed the biggest problem #59600 with block patterns, but still have some things we wanted to progress in 6.7 for the WP_Theme_JSON system. However, the maintenance of that system between the GB repo on the Core repo has made executing and testing changes reliably pretty challenging. I opened this issue to discuss how we can improve this process going forward. I’d be happy for folks here to give feedback.
- In terms of our tracking issue, I’ll post an update in light of the final 6.6 changes we were able to make and update any remaining tasks we want to pursue.

Open Floor

@joemcgill FYI: there’s a new channel, #pluginreview-plugincheck to have discussions related to maintaining the Plugin Check plugin that we helped build.
- @thekt12 mentioned most PRs show errors
- @joemcgill I’ve seen that on occasion as well, but not causing any merge checks to fail, and not consistently with the same message. Could be flaky e2e tests.
@mukesh27 As the Performance Lab plugin has added support for WebP, AVIF, and Picture elements, what is the tentative WordPress version we are targeting for merging these features?
- @joemcgill WP already supports uploading those versions, and gives site owners the ability to convert uploaded files to those formats using a filter, but there are currently no plans to make either the “default” format that is used for the intermediate sizes that WP creates.
- @westonruter And merging picture element support will require a lot of testing and there will certainly be many theme and plugin compatibility issues
- @joemcgill #55443 is probably the best ticket to revisit for this