sitespeed.io 17.0.0 on Node.js NPM

17.0.0 - 2021-04.15

Woohoo we shipped 17.0.0! There are many changes and you should read through the full changelog and focus on the new best practise section and breaking changes.

New best practices

One of the new things in 17 is the support for one extra key in Graphite: the name of the test. Set a computer friendly name of your test by using --slug. Then use the slug in the graphite key by adding --graphite.addSlugToKey to your run. When you do that change, should also convert your graphite data and your dashboards. The plan is like this:

In April 2021 you can convert your data and use the slug. You need to add --graphite.addSlugToKey true else you will get a log warning that you miss the slug for your test. All default dashboards in sitespeed.io will use the slug, so to use them you should add that new key and convert your data.
In September 2021 --graphite.addSlugToKey true will be set to default, meaning if you haven't upgraded your Graphite data yet, you need to set --graphite.addSlugToKey false to be able to run as before.
In November 2021 the CLI functionality will disappear and you need upgrade your Graphite metrics when you upgrade sitespeed.io.

You can read how to upgrade in the documentation.

When you have updated you will add one extra parameter to your test: --copyLatestFilesToBase. When you have done all these step you are ready for ... using the new dashboards in Grafana with screenshot and video from last run. This is SUPER useful to be able to fast see what's going on. Checkout what it looks like here and here.

We ship all new dashboards with some extra focus on Google Web Vitals (for sitespeed.io, WebPageTest, Google Page Speed Insights, Lighthouse and CRUX). We understand that these metrics is important for some users so lets focus on them. We also ship a couple new example dahsboards for how to setup user journeys. Documentation for those will come soon.

There's a new version of the Coach with a new super important privacy advice: Make sure you disable Chrome's new FLoC for your site. Read more about FLoC.

Breaking changes

We have changed some of the connectivity profiles, you can see the changes here. This means that if you use 3g connectivity using Throttle, your tests will have a faster TTFB than before. If you wanna hold on to the old settings you can do that by adding --browsertime.legacyConnectivityProfiles true to your tests.
Read the full list of other changes in Browsertime.

What to think about when upgrading

You need to do a plan on when you want to upgrade Graphite to be able to use those new dashboards. You can upgrade to 17.0.0 and continue as before but to be able to use the new things in the dashboards you need to upgrade your Graphite data).

Other notable changes

Many thanks to Inderpartap Singh Cheema that fixed so that you can use --chrome.blockDomainsExcept together with WebPageReplay in the Docker container, so you more easily can focus on the performance disregarding 3rd party marketing scripts.

We have a couple of new metrics that is the delta between TTFB and First Contentful Paint, Largest Contentful paint and First visual change #1528. You can use this if you have unstable TTFB and want to alert on front end metrics. The metrics are automatically sent to Graphite.

Lets continue with all the changes.

Added

Updated to Browsertime 12.0.0 with the following changes:
- Display standard deviation instead of the home made median deviation in the cli output #1529.
- Renamed layoutShift to the more correct cumulativeLayoutShift. This will is a breaking change if you use that metric. Updates to the new and coming layout shift changes announced by Google will be implemented the coming weeks.
- Updated Chrome start flags on desktop following best practices and removing old flags #1507.
- Updated Chrome start flags on Android following best practices and removing old flags #1506.
- Finally the "new" connectivity settings are default. You can see the difference in https://github.com/sitespeedio/browsertime/blob/main/lib/connectivity/trafficShapeParser.js#L5-L104. Changed in #1540. If you wanna run with the legacy setting use --legacyConnectivityProfiles. See #1160 for the original change.
- The default minimum wait time for waiting if a test is finished is now 8 seconds (instead of 5) #1542.
- Fix --chrome.blockDomainsExcept when you are using WebPageReplay #1532. Thank you Inderpartap Singh Cheema for the original fix!
- Make sure gnirehtet is closed on the right device using device id #1527
- Upgraded to GeckoDriver 0.29.1.
- Updated wpr_cert.pem to a new version for WebPageReplay #1316.
- Include Google Web Vitals in the HAR file #1535.
- Added 3 seconds wait time for geckoprofiler to start see #1538 and #1539
- Added a ten seconds wait if getting the HAR from Firefox fails the first time #1546 fixes #3346.
- New metrics: Delta between TTFB and First Contentful Paint, Largest Contentful paint and First visual change #1528. You can use this if you have unstable TTFB and want to alert on front end metrics. Lets see when other also implement this :)
- Made it easier for people to get Google Web Vitals. We copy that data under the googleWebVitals namespace in the result JSON #1521.
- Added TTFB as a single metric #1522.
- New stop watch command #1512. Measure time by:
```
   timer.start(); 
  // Do something
  // Stop the timer and add the result to the last tested URL
  timer.stopAndAdd();
```
- Pre test/warm a URL with --preWarmServer. Do that to make sure your server has cached everything that is needed before your test #1515 and #1516.
- Collect what HTML element change in cumulative layout shifts #1534
- Added support for recording video on Safari iOS #1541.
- New commands: scrolling by Pixels, Lines or Pages forward, back or refresh navigations, create new tabs or windows and switch to them and new mouse events such as context click, single click, double click, click and hold, release, and movement. Thank you Denis Palmeiro for PR #1533.
- Improve proxy configuration support, thank you Olaf Meeuwissen for PR #1542.
- Upgraded to Selenium 4.0.0-beta.3 #1544.
- Updated to Chrome 90 in the Docker container and Chromedriver 90 as default #1543.
Added --preWarmServer that makes a request to your web server to fill the server cache before you start your tests.
Send navigation timings metrics by default to Graphite/Influx #3316.
Updated the wpt-plugin to send TBT and CLS to data storage.
Updated the Lighthouse plugin to send Goggle Web Vitals to data storage.
Updated to Lighthouse 7.3.0 in the Lighthouse plugin.
Lighthouse and GPSI plugins published to npm
Updated the GPSI plugin to send Google Web Vitals to data storage (and show it in the HTML).
Renamed layouShift to cumulativeLayoutShift
Send TTFB and Google Web Vitals by default to data storage for Browsertime (making it easier to find them in Influx).

Fixed

Updated to latest aws-sdk , google cloud storage and axe-core 4.1.4 #3334
Updated to latest Coach and PageXray.