At TownNews.com, we are focused on making performance improvements to our front-end and back-end systems. In this release, we are adding a few technology tools to help us make incremental improvements to site speed in the future.
Script modules get async and onload support. Our script-loading modules are able now to have an "async" attribute, which allows them to be loaded when the rest of the page is complete. This means the page won't wait for any of these scripts (what is called "render blocking") and may appear to be faster or more responsive. Implementation of this module will happen over the next few weeks in our front-end template updates.
Preload optimization hinting.Preload optimization hinting allows templates to declare specific library files to preload while the page is still downloading from the server. It is now available in most modern browsers, and will be added to upcoming template releases.
Preconnect & DNS-Prefetch for the TownNews.com CDN. In this version, we are adding a resource hint for our Content Delivery Network (CDN) server. This is also supported in most modern browsers. This means that the browser will attempt to pre-connect to our CDN as soon as possible in order to speed up page load times.
All CDN connections are now made exclusively over HTTPS. In order to move toward HTTP/2 implementation (which is coming in the future), we are adding secure support to our CDN connections. This will continue to work regardless of which 'secure mode' is currently enforced on a site.
Again, these are small, incremental changes which will be rolled out over time, and are a continuation of the work we are doing on both front-end and back-end performance.
