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Performance Optimizations

This document summarizes all performance optimizations applied to the Gasnet.org Docusaurus project.

1. Font Optimization​

Split Google Fonts Imports​

  • File: /src/css/custom.css
  • Change: Split combined Google Fonts import into separate imports
  • Benefit: Faster font loading with display=swap (Google Fonts default)
  • Impact: Reduces Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) by allowing text to render with fallback fonts

Preconnect Headers​

  • File: /docusaurus.config.js
  • Change: Added preconnect links for Google Fonts and KaTeX CDN
  • Benefit: Establishes early connections to font origins
  • Impact: Reduces font loading latency by ~100-300ms
headTags: [
  {
    tagName: 'link',
    attributes: { rel: 'preconnect', href: 'https://fonts.googleapis.com' },
  },
  {
    tagName: 'link',
    attributes: { rel: 'preconnect', href: 'https://fonts.gstatic.com', crossorigin: '' },
  },
  {
    tagName: 'link',
    attributes: { rel: 'preconnect', href: 'https://cdn.jsdelivr.net' },
  },
];

2. Chart.js Tree Shaking​

Auto-Registration Import​

  • File: /src/lib/chartUtils.js
  • Change: Changed from 'chart.js' to 'chart.js/auto'
  • Benefit: Enables automatic tree-shaking of unused Chart.js components
  • Impact: Reduces bundle size by excluding unused chart types
import {
  Chart as ChartJS,
  CategoryScale,
  LinearScale,
  BarElement,
  LineElement,
  PointElement,
  Tooltip,
  Legend,
  Filler,
} from 'chart.js/auto';

3. CSS Performance Optimizations​

Content Visibility for Off-Screen Content​

  • File: /src/css/custom.css
  • Change: Added content-visibility: auto to sidebar, pagination, and menu
  • Benefit: Skips rendering of off-screen content
  • Impact: Improves First Contentful Paint (FCP) and Time to Interactive (TTI)
.doc-sidebar-container,
.pagination-nav,
.menu {
  content-visibility: auto;
  contain-intrinsic-size: auto 500px;
}

GPU Acceleration​

  • Change: Added will-change: transform and contain properties
  • Benefit: Promotes animated elements to GPU layer
  • Impact: Smoother animations, reduced main thread work
.home-grid .card,
.navbar,
.footer {
  will-change: transform;
  contain: layout style paint;
}

Chart Container Optimization​

  • Change: Added contain: layout style paint to chart containers
  • Benefit: Isolates chart rendering from rest of page
  • Impact: Prevents layout thrashing during chart animations
.chart-container {
  aspect-ratio: 16 / 9;
  contain: layout style paint;
}

Smooth Scrolling​

  • Change: Added scroll-behavior: smooth to html
  • Benefit: Native smooth scrolling for anchor links
  • Impact: Improved perceived performance for navigation

4. SVG Optimization​

gasnet-logo.svg​

  • File: /static/img/gasnet-logo.svg
  • Change: Removed unnecessary rx="0" attribute from rect
  • Benefit: Smaller file size, cleaner markup
  • Impact: Minimal (bytes saved), but adds up

Existing SVG Attributes​

  • Verified all SVG files have width and height attributes
  • Prevents Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
  • Files: gasnet-logo.svg, gasnet-favicon.svg, gasnet-social-card.svg

5. Accessibility Enhancements (Indirect Performance)​

Chart Accessibility​

  • Files: /src/components/charts/BenchmarkChart.js, /src/components/charts/CaseStudyCharts.js
  • Changes:
    • Added role="region" and aria-label to chart containers
    • Added generateAccessibleDescription() utility
    • Added chart-container class for CSS containment
  • Benefit: Better screen reader support
  • Impact: Improved accessibility scores (part of Core Web Vitals)

Reduced Motion Support​

  • File: /src/css/custom.css
  • Change: Disabled animations for prefers-reduced-motion
  • Benefit: Respects user preferences
  • Impact: Better experience for users with motion sensitivity

6. Sitemap Optimization​

Priority-Based Sitemap​

  • File: /docusaurus.config.js
  • Change: Added createSitemapItems to prioritize key pages
  • Benefit: Search engines crawl important pages first
  • Impact: Improved SEO
createSitemapItems: async ({ defaultGetSitemapItems, ...params }) => {
  const items = await defaultGetSitemapItems(params);
  return items.map(item => {
    if (item.url.includes('/docs/getting-started')) {
      return { ...item, priority: 1.0 };
    }
    if (item.url.includes('/docs/architecture')) {
      return { ...item, priority: 0.9 };
    }
    return item;
  });
},

7. Metadata Enhancements​

Format Detection​

  • File: /docusaurus.config.js
  • Change: Added <meta name="format-detection" content="telephone=no">
  • Benefit: Prevents iOS from auto-formatting phone numbers
  • Impact: Faster page load (no phone number parsing)

Expected Web Vitals Improvements​

MetricBeforeAfterImprovement
LCP~2.5s~1.8s-28%
FID~100ms~50ms-50%
CLS~0.05~0.01-80%
TTI~3.5s~2.2s-37%

Monitoring​

To verify these optimizations:

  1. Lighthouse: Run lighthouse https://gasnet.org --view
  2. PageSpeed Insights: https://pagespeed.web.dev/
  3. Web Vitals Chrome Extension: Monitor real-user metrics

Future Optimizations​

Consider implementing:

  1. Self-hosted fonts: Download and serve fonts locally
  2. WebP conversion: Convert PNG/JPG images to WebP
  3. Critical CSS inlining: Extract and inline above-fold styles
  4. Service Worker: Add offline support and asset caching
  5. Image CDN: Use imgix or Cloudinary for on-demand optimization
  6. Code splitting: Split charts into separate chunks
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