Get ready for a major website speed boost in 2024! Speculation Rules is a new feature that's already supported by WordPress and Hyvä, and it's bringing significant improvements to Time To First Byte (TTFB). This, in turn, will positively impact First Contentful Paint (FCP) and Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), which are key metrics for Core Web Vitals.
Source: https://developer.chrome.com/blog/web-at-io24/
Here's why Speculation Rules are so exciting:
- No JavaScript needed: Unlike other methods, Speculation Rules don't require any JavaScript, so they won't slow down your website.
- Easy to implement: Setting up Speculation Rules only involves a bit of JSON code and some CSS or regular expression rules.
- Works everywhere: Even if a browser doesn't support Speculation Rules, your website won't break. It's progressively enhanced.
- Free cache warming: Speculation Rules can pre-load resources into your CDN or FPC cache, potentially eliminating the need for separate pre-rendering services.
To measure the effectiveness of Speculation Rules, you can use website speed monitoring tools like RUMvision. The included chart (based on percentiles) shows the impact on TTFB for pages pre-rendered by the browser:
- 15%: Achieved an absolute best-case scenario with a 0ms TTFB.
- 60%: Saw a TTFB improvement compared to their average (cumulative success rate of 75%).
- 25%: Did not experience a TTFB improvement.
If you're looking to improve your website speed, Speculation Rules are definitely worth checking out!
