Preload key requests

mariadwyer · 25 Jan 2022, 16:31

The Opportunities section of your Lighthouse report flags the third level of requests in your critical request chain as preload candidates:

How Lighthouse flags determines preload candidates #
Suppose your page's critical request chain looks like this:

Code: Select all

index.html
|--app.js
   |--styles.css
   |--ui.js

Your index.html file declares <script src="app.js">. When app.js runs , it calls fetch() in order to download styles.css and ui.js. The page doesn't appear complete until those last 2 resources are downloaded, parsed, and executed. Using the example above, Lighthouse would flag styles.css and ui.js as candidates.

The potential savings are based on how much earlier the browser would be able to start the requests if you declared preload links. For example, if app.js takes 200ms to download, parse, and execute, the potential savings for each resource is 200ms since app.js is no longer a bottleneck for each of the requests.

Preloading requests can make your pages load faster.

The problem here is that the browser only becomes aware of those last 2 resources after it downloads, parses, and executes app.js. But you know that those resources are important and should be downloaded as soon as possible.

Declare your preload links #
Declare preload links in your HTML to instruct the browser to download key resources as soon as possible.

Code: Select all

<head>
  ...
  <link rel="preload" href="styles.css" as="style">
  <link rel="preload" href="ui.js" as="script">
  ...
</head>

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Preload key requests

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