> making your script async … can hurt with other things I can't agree. It will likely regress window.load time, but that's a bad metric. Additionally, the ref

> making your script async … can hurt with other things I can't agree. It will likely regress window.load time, but that's a bad metric. Additionally, the reflow cost post-execute will be <100ms, but the delay to the paint caused by a sync script worth 100-5000ms. In very rare occasions would it be preferable to show a white page to a user longer to avoid the DOM change costs. > DomContentLoaded Agree with the above. Additionally, I believe all browsers wait for DCL handlers to finish loading before painting (for the common case). But, most pages have ALOT of code attached to DCL. If the handlers are not critical for the first paint (they shouldn't be), then the easy fix would probably be document.on('DOMContentLoaded', e => { requestAnimationFrame(function(){ /* your doc.ready stuff */ })}); That way you get a paint to the user before your piles of DCL code runs.