21 ms·

Web.dev by Google

699 points by mxschumacher 8y ago

ithrewthat4351 8y ago
How about we just give back .dev for registration free? :)
- empyrical 8y ago
  They are opening it up now: https://get.dev/ https://get.dev/
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
pestkranker 8y ago
It's actually Lighthouse under the hood.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
iamunr 8y ago
So sad to see .dev go. :(
- CydeWeys 8y ago
  Precisely the opposite -- it's going to be available for open registration soon. https://get.dev/ https://get.dev/
  - partiallypro 8y ago
    Do you have to use Google's registrar service? That page isn't clear, and if you have to use Google's service, I don't view that as a good precedent.
    - CydeWeys 8y ago
      No, it will be available across a wide range of registrars, similar to .app. You can see the full list of participating registrars for our existing TLDs here: https://www.registry.google/register-a-domain/ https://www.registry.google/register-a-domain/
    - bduerst 8y ago
      Correct me if I'm wrong, but registries can't let single registrars have exclusive access to TLDs. If Alphabet/Google were to do this it would be antitrust, and they could lose their dual registry/registrar status.
- Kagerjay 8y ago
  .test it is then
cyberferret 8y ago
Getting Chrome SSL warnings on both the OP link and https://get.dev/ https://get.dev/ Doesn't really evoke confidence, if this is a Google initiative. Can someone post a short precis as to what this is about for those of us who cannot visit the URLs? UPDATE: Apologies - My bad, not Google's fault. I had a local Valet/NGINX redirect for local .dev domains setup for Laravel development projects that was causing the issue.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- CydeWeys 8y ago
  Can you post a screenshot of the certificate you're seeing? It sounds like you're being MITMed. It works fine in Chrome for me. Oh, and this is definitely a valid Google initiative. Source: Work for Google, am involved in this.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - cyberferret 8y ago
    Ah, OK, I think I worked out what is happening. I have a valet service running for local Laravel development which is redirecting local .dev subdomains to Valet instances on my iMac! Apologies for that - I will shut down the Valet service and try again.
    - CydeWeys 8y ago
      Valet fixed this last year. Recommend that you update: https://github.com/laravel/valet/pull/436 https://github.com/laravel/valet/pull/436 Although that might only change the default for new installs; you might still need to change it for existing installs. I'm not sure; I've never used Laravel.
- traek 8y ago
  I'm seeing a valid cert issued to Google.
paulddraper 8y ago
Will someone please elucidate which Google resources are still relevant? * https://web.dev/ https://web.dev/ * https://developers.google.com/speed/ https://developers.google.com/speed/ * https://developers.google.com/web/ https://developers.google.com/web/ (including https://developers.google.com/web/tools/lighthouse/ https://developers.google.com/web/tools/lighthouse/)
- robdodson 8y ago
  Heyo! One of the web.dev devs here. The new web.dev site is an experiment from our team to see if we can improve the interactivity of our docs. We link to developers.google.com/web in a number of places. Over time, if folks seem to enjoy the web.dev model, we may explore moving more of our docs over there. But for now it's just a fun experiment
  - chimen 8y ago
    I like that material design. Can you share the tech stack it was built with?
weinzierl 8y ago
It only accepts https URLs. Lighthouse in the DevTools can do both, http and https.
- robdodson 8y ago
  Yep that's our mistake (one of the web.dev devs). We auto added https to every URL. Oops! Gonna fix that as soon as we are out of our code freeze
  - danillonunes 8y ago
    > one of the web.dev devs web.dev^2
    - Jaruzel 8y ago
      What dev does a web.dev dev when a web.dev dev devs?
  - onion2k 8y ago
    I assumed that was intentional to push everyone to use https.
  - microcolonel 8y ago
    Confused about the purpose of a "code freeze", I guess you're focused on monitoring for abuse, so don't want to go back to working on features/functionality yet?
yandrypozo 8y ago
I just ran their audit to https://mail.google.com https://mail.google.com, you guys (googlers) need to speed up your websites first, Gmail is terrible slow lately, just saying...
- partiallypro 8y ago
  Google's pagespeed service is hot garbage. You can do things that make the page load significantly slower and get a perfect score than if you had a lower pagespeed score with a much faster page load. I also find it strange how I can get an A on every other page speed service, including GTMetrix, but get an F on Google's tes(s). Totally useless.
  - billyhoffman 8y ago
    Isn't GTMetrix just a combined Page Speed Insights and YSlow audit?
    - partiallypro 8y ago
      It uses an older version of Pagespeed, yes.
    - josefresco 8y ago
      I never pay attention to the "grades" only the data, especially the waterfall graph/data. The grades are ridiculous, and mostly meant to cause alarm. You can score 100/100 on almost every test, but get a "D" overall because you scored poorly on 1 or 2 tests. It's great tool for techs, but in the hands of a client almost every result/score appears terrible.
  - wild_preference 8y ago
    Meh, these tests are just good ways to find obvious problems with your site. Fixating on the overall score seems like an indication of a different problem. For example, you can't change the caching behavior of google-analytics.js, and it's usually intractable to split apart your CSS to optimize for above-the-fold content. Oh well, you didn't get a perfect score. Stay practical.
iambateman 8y ago
This looks kinda cool. I have a hard time believing this is "for web developers" when most web developers used `.dev` for local development, which was broken because Google decided they wanted to own `.dev` for themselves. Bad taste in my mouth.
- crooked-v 8y ago
  > when most web developers used `.dev` for local development Most web developers were wrong. The reserved TLD for local development has been .localhost since 1999.
  - CydeWeys 8y ago
    Or .test. See RFC 2606: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2606 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2606
    - shkkmo 8y ago
      I think .test is the TLD is the one most likely to work as expected as for all use cases as .localhost might be expected to only ever point to the loopback IP address. If anyone does something more complicated (like using a vagrant private network ip address), you might find some tools break unexpectedly. Edit: the newer version of the docs have more details (in section 6) on the differences to be expected between test, localhost, example and invalid domains. see: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6761 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6761
- NelsonMinar 8y ago
  It might be time to let this one go.
  - Sir_Substance 8y ago
    Some of us are still tickets once a month or so over this. Kinda hard to let it go.
  - omeid2 8y ago
crooked-v 8y ago
I wonder how many things will break when .dev domains become broadly available.
- ripexz 8y ago
  They're already "broken" on Chrome for a few versions now, we switched all `.dev`s to `.localhost` in dev environments at my company.
  - geerlingguy 8y ago
    I've switched all my stuff to .test, since that domain doesn't cause as many weird issues with some routers, proxies, OS networking bugs, dumb regex, etc. Also, .test is reserved for testing/local forever, so it won't suffer the same fate as .dev.
billyhoffman 8y ago
This is powered by Google Lighthouse, with the benefit of it being done via a web UI instead of a Dev Tools Audit. Which is both good and bad. Good because Lighthouse has some reasonable best practices to follow, and a few good performance timings, so lowering the barriers of entry is nice. Bad because many of Lighthouses best practices aren't always applicable (our major media customers constantly say "stop telling me a need a #$%ing Service Worker!"). And while Speed Index and Start Render are great, Time-to-interactive, First CPU idle, and estimated keyboard latency are still fairly fluid/poorly defined, and of different value. This all also overlooks the value that something like the Browser's User Timings provides (Stop trying to figure out what's a "contentful" or "meaningful" paint, and let me just use performance.mark to tell you "my hero image finished and the CTA click handler registered at X"), which Lighthouse doesn't surface up. What is interesting is the monitoring side. WebPageTest, Lighthouse, Page Speed Insights, YSlow, etc are just point-in-time assessments that is largely commoditized. Tracking this stuff over time and extracting meaningful data is valuable, so that's pretty cool. Disclaimer: I work in the web performance space. People replace homegrown Lighthouse, puppeteer, or WPT instances with our commercial software, so I'm biased. However I like a lot of the raising awareness and trail blazing about what Performance/UX means that Google is doing.
- arkitaip 8y ago
  Oh god that Service Worker bs. It's like how Yahoo's performance profiler penalized you for not using a CDN on a single page site.
- vntok 8y ago
  Why don't you want to implement a basic service worker? A couple of cache strategies among these ones seem like a net positive? https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/instant-and-offline/offline-cookbook/ https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/instant-and-o... (ex: "Cache, falling back to network" for CDN'd libraries, "Cache then network" for content like news articles)
  - dbbk 8y ago
    Standard caching headers should be enough?
tinyvm 8y ago
Google is really pushing Hard on PWA. My biggest concern is the support outside of chrome. While other browsers tend to come on pair with chrome in terms of features , chrome right now is the only one which supports PWA as "native" app.. Windows announced support for PWA natively a while ago [0] but there has been no news since then. On Apple side it's silence radio...iOS have some support but for Mac it seems unlikely to happen... [0]https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2018/02/06/welcoming-progressive-web-apps-edge-windows-10/ https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2018/02/06/welcoming-pro...
- bhauer 8y ago
  FWIW, the official Twitter desktop app for Windows 10 is a PWA and it works great (well, as well as any official Twitter app has worked in my assessment; not as well as third-party apps from their hey-day, but that's a different story). I also use the Starbucks PWA (app.starbucks.com) and it mostly works well. Again, it seems to work as well as their native apps.
- pjmlp 8y ago
  > Windows announced support for PWA natively a while ago [0] but there has been no news since then. There have been news since February. UWP hosted apps got replaced with PWAs, including access to UWP APIs if signed, documentation and tooling support is now available. https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/pwa https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/pwa https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/progressive-web-apps/get-started https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/progressive-... This is what made me have another look at PWAs, start experimenting with them and starting to see, that for plain CRUD applications PWAs are probably the way to go.
- ubersoldat2k7 8y ago
  The funny/sad thing about PWA and how broken it's on iOS right now, is that the first iPhone was supposed to work with PWA. I'm not sure if it was Jobs' vision or they didn't have something good to offer for native devs. Safari has been a joke for long time now.
  - 8y ago
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
d--b 8y ago
Interesting that they’re not selling AMP in there. They most likely didnt dare
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
shinryuu 8y ago
I get that the site can't be reached.. ? Is it a valid site?
- CydeWeys 8y ago
  Yes, it is a valid site. Looks like you've got something wrong with your local or network config that needs to be fixed.
- danillonunes 8y ago
  It has been a common practice for devs to setup a local DNS server that points any *.dev domain to localhost. Maybe you did it (or installed some tool that did it) and forgot.
  - sandov 8y ago
    >or installed some tool that did it I would love to see an example of this. Software-gore.
modzu 8y ago
is this a joke?
k__ 8y ago
Only works for HTTPS.
- robdodson 8y ago
  Yep that's our bad. We accidentally started prefixing all of the urls with https we've fixed the bug but haven't shipped it yet cuz we're in code freeze
NelsonMinar 8y ago
Talk about breaking the back button! Do a measurement on a website. Then click one of the Guide links like "Links do not have a discernible name". Page navigates away from the report to some documentation. Click back, report is gone. I get it, it's a single page webapp. But if you do that you need to make all the simple navigations open new tabs. There is a "open link in new button" icon next to each link, but that's really not good enough.
- robdodson 8y ago
  Ah yeah that's something we want to fix. If you're signed in it keeps the report around but if you're signed-out it's stateless. It's definitely on our to-do list to fix.
  - NelsonMinar 8y ago
    Fair enough! Thanks for the reply.
  - koboll 8y ago
    Maybe just throw on a target='_blank', no need to do anything fancy
    - sniuff 8y ago
      it's stateless
  - dmitriid 8y ago
    > on our to-do list to fix This is sort of representative of web.dev vs the rest of Google. Read the rest of the comments, seriously. I would be very discouraged to release this web site when the rest of the company is vehemently opposed to any of the practices listed there.
  - softawre 8y ago
    It's made worse by the fact that you can't easily read the recommendation without clicking on it.
jjordan 8y ago
Must be nice to have all the money in the world to purchase any domain you want.
amaccuish 8y ago
ICANN were foolish to go down the new TLD root. Why should Google have ownership over web.dev, and not mozilla (MDN) or w3c?
- yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
  Money. And possibly timing.
- acheron 8y ago
  Foolish how? Sure, it kind of ruins DNS, but ICANN made a lot of money, and isn’t that the important thing?
- voycey 8y ago
  Totally agree, Money talks!
- Jaruzel 8y ago
  And lets not talk about .Amazon being given to Amazon (the company) and not Amazon (the rainforest).
keyle 8y ago
Wow. From the people that have been botching the web for 20 years... I mean it's only recently that they've started getting their things together. And arguably their flat design isn't always usable. Now let's talk speed....
stabbles 8y ago
Try and compare cnn.com with lite.cnn.com. Or (if you're Dutch) compare nos.nl with noslite.nl. All hail text only news websites.
- mangoleaf 8y ago
  Agreed! I love the text only sites. I would add text.npr.org to the list also. I am very tired of sites that spill media and JavaScript all over the place and add no real value, just to slow the site down or to make it completely unusable. A typical site of mine breaks all the rules of current UI design. [1] [1] http://vqRN.com http://vqRN.com
NKCSS 8y ago
I think I broke Google > Error: 500 from Lighthouse API: Internal Server Error
- chrismorgan 8y ago
  I tried a couple of other sites first, successfully, then I tried asking it about https://web.dev https://web.dev, and that’s when it fell over.
technion 8y ago
Given this says it's in beta, can anyone see where I can report a bug?
rblion 8y ago
won't load...
modernerd 8y ago
Web.dev looks incredible for educating web developers, exposing Lighthouse to devs who aren't already familiar with it, and for automating basic website testing over time. But it will be a nightmare for support teams working at any kind of web service. As Google doesn't provide support for this tooling and site owners invariably fixate on the scores it provides, product support teams for everything from WordPress themes to CDNs end up fielding support questions that Google should be helping with via resources pitched at the non-technical folks who inevitably use these tools (as well as, you know, help from an actual human support team). As it stands, support teams will now be inundated with questions unrelated to their product from customers who have no interest or technical background to read the current educational sections of web.dev, and whose time would be better spent crafting landing pages, great content, or reducing the 38 social plugins they're using instead of making all the dials turn green. I can already foresee the support requests from the web.dev scores: “Google says my WordPress site isn't installable. Where's the option for that in your theme?” “Your website says Cloudflare improves load time. But my first meaningful paint time went up by 1.5 seconds after setting it up! I'm going to write bad reviews about you.” “Google says I need to theme my browser's address bar to match my branding. I added that tag they mention but don't see any change in my browser.” It's great to build awareness of ways to make the web faster and better, but it needs to be backed with guidance that's pitched at the ability of the people who will be using these automated testing tools. For example, why not detect the technology behind the site and — for stuff like WordPress — recommend plugins or other tech-specific resources that could help fix problems like lack of image lazy-loading? There are lots of ways education could be enhanced for non-developers.
- exodust 8y ago
  But it's a resource for web devs, mostly used by web devs. Reinforced by the web.dev domain name, which surprised me. I've never seen .dev domain before. All audit tools make recommendations that many of us will ignore. I have zero intention of using webp images for example. I don't think your claim that "nightmares" will happen is warranted. Shiny new site audit tools are fun. Enjoy it, there's no nightmare!
alib 8y ago
This site didn't load properly in Firefox on a Samsung Galaxy S8 just now, and the accessibility section is "coming soon". I'm sorry Google, but if you're letting key basics like this slip... Accessibility is not a bolt-on for afters, and chrome isn't the only web browser. Deep down you know this too. Those who preach are held to higher standards, and you've let yourselves down badly here.
- magicalist 8y ago
  > This site didn't load properly in Firefox on a Samsung Galaxy S8 just now Check your extensions. It loads fine for me. > you've let yourselves down badly here. ...because an article on accessibility is "coming soon"?
  - alib 8y ago
    I can't replicate it in private browsing. I'm not running any mobile extensions and my internet is as good as it comes. First time I loaded it the blue line at the top was there for ages. I was scrolling the site for a good 20 secs marvelling at the irony of a site teaching performance not performing. It felt like something to do with the service worker not working. The cookie notice only appeared after I refreshed. Now it works fine, and loads fine each time. So it was something to do with the initial caching of assets. And yes, the accessibility section coming soon sends the wrong message very subtly but powerfully. It's something we all need to be better at, and when you've got the resources of Google there just isn't any excuse. Those two small words on that missing section quietly absolve us all. Because if Google can't do it right, why should we? It just isn't good enough, so yes, they have let themselves and our community down. I know they're strong words, but someone needed to say it.
    - magicalist 8y ago
      > The cookie notice only appeared after I refreshed Maybe it's a geo thing. Are you in Europe? I see no cookie notice (US). > I know they're strong words, but someone needed to say it. Eh, it needs to be there but don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. It's apparently in "beta" and according to this hn thread robdodson is working on it, so odds are the accessibility section will be handled just fine. Regardless > Those who preach are held to higher standards is a bad take. You can criticize a tutorial site without standing on such a flimsy soapbox.
arendtio 8y ago
> Accessible to all - Coming Soon Probably the frontend joke of the last two decades... And a bad one too.
fhdhehfhzhe 8y ago
Looks like this - https://webhint.io https://webhint.io Why not collaborate with the people who’ve made this first, google?
- feb 8y ago
  The similarities with webhint are striking. For example they have mostly the same categories : * Performance (exactly same as webhint) * PWA (exactly same name as webhint) * Accessibility (exactly same as webhint) * Best Practices * SEO Webhint also has categories Interoperability and Security. Not sure what web.dev uses for those.
  - fhdhehfhzhe 8y ago
    Plus it’s open source and welcomes contributions https://webhint.io/docs/contributor-guide/ https://webhint.io/docs/contributor-guide/
- magicalist 8y ago
  As others have noted, looks like this is just running Lighthouse? That's been around for a long time.
  - softawre 8y ago
    From webhint's about/faq: > webhint’s development started inside the Microsoft Edge team
    - magicalist 8y ago
      > webhint’s development started inside the Microsoft Edge team ...was that before lighthouse started? And was open source and seem viable at the time?
stupidbird 8y ago
I can't wait for one of the executives in my company to run into this, understand nothing but the numbers, and then complain about our numbers not being higher despite the fact that half of these metrics aren't applicable to our web app. I already have a boilerplate response to "why isn't our google pagespeed score higher" that I copy and paste. I know Google's happy about performance nagging, but I wish they were better at knowing what is/isn't applicable.
- kaycebasques 8y ago
  I agree that this is a problem. See my other comment in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18442686 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18442686
  - stupidbird 8y ago
    Thanks for reading through the comments. I do agree that some sort of "not all these metrics may be applicable to your architecture, please consult an engineer" would go a long way. I left a toxic work environment at one point where I was literally yelled at because I was claiming to know our company's situation better than Google's pagespeed tools. Needless to say, that wasn't the only problem with that job... but it's frustrating.
hornetblack 8y ago
"Imagine if your favorite game took forever to load because you were on a slow network connection, it wouldn't be your favorite game for very long. " I can inform you that games I play take forever to load on slow networks. (Overwatch, Darksouls). Although I guess it's not downloading the game. It's just trying to login to the servers.
koib 8y ago
What if there's a login/auth wall before getting to the actual page you want to test?
skunkworker 8y ago
If you have an old version of Pow installed. Make sure to either upgrade to Puma-dev (Which moves .dev to .test, the correct subdomain for local machine testing) or uninstall it first.
scrame 8y ago
I tried my rather large work website and it was unable to fetch it after a couple tries. Also this is the same company that brought us AMP and didn't use closing tags on their landing page to "save bandwidth", and tried to push a java -> JavaScript nightmare of a gui toolkit. I don't get why they are trying to push for this unless it's trying to strongarm devs into making more shitty AMP pages.
hardwaresofton 8y ago
In case you're wondering what's in it for google with PWAs/App manifests/"Installable apps"[0], it's answered in another recent HN post[1] and comment[2]. I wrote and deleted a pretty vitriolic comment about not trusting google as stewards of anything, people who care about the user (outside of selling data/access to the user millions of times a second), but I couldn't figure out why they would push app manifests (the only interesting part of the actual comment). [0]: https://web.dev/installable https://web.dev/installable [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18434639 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18434639 [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18435412 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18435412
artiya4u 8y ago
Error: 403 from Lighthouse API: Forbidden If you're using Cloudflare.
- apatheticonion 8y ago
  Or cloudfront
- guessmyname 8y ago
  No, the CDN doesn’t matters. It is happening with Google’s services as well. See my report here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18437749 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18437749
crazygringo 8y ago
Why am I getting: Error: 403 from Lighthouse API: Forbidden whenever I try to run the audit on any of my sites hosted on Digital Ocean? They all load normally in my browser... Anyone else having the same issue?
- prophesi 8y ago
  Yep, all of my DO hosted sites share the same fate.
- chaostheory 8y ago
  I'm on AWS. Same issue.
- guessmyname 8y ago
  Even attempting to scan “www.google.com” returns a 403: curl -XPOST \ -H "Accept: */*" \ -H "Connection: keep-alive" \ -H "Accept-Language: en-us" \ -H "Origin: https://web.dev" \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ -H "Referer: https://web.dev/measure" \ -H "Host: lighthouse-dot-webdotdevsite.appspot.com" \ -H "User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/537.36" \ --data-binary '{"url":"https://www.google.com","replace":true,"save":false}' \ "https://lighthouse-dot-webdotdevsite.appspot.com/lh/newaudit" {"errors":"Error: 403 from Lighthouse API: Forbidden"}
- judge2020 8y ago
  Probably an issue with the actual scanning service. web.dev itself gets the same error.
- nacs 8y ago
  I have a feeling they've hit some kind of API limit for their own Lighthouse service ironically.
- ganeshkrishnan 8y ago
  I got a "no such site" first and then this 403 error.
- nodesocket 8y ago
LolNoGenerics 8y ago
Over a decade of experience... with service workers! Nice trick, leave time travel to spock et al.
nh2 8y ago
> Accessible to all The website itself doesn't seem to take that too seriously. For example, it loses scroll position when navigating: * go there from HN * scroll down a bit * press the Back button in the browser to go back to HN * press the Forward button in the browser to go to the site again * you are now scrolled the very top again, instead of where you scrolled to Tested in curren Chrome and Firefox on Linux. Also note how HN doesn't have this problem, it will remember your scroll position so you can continue reading where you left off. Browsers are smart, they have accessibility built-in. Too clever JavaScriptery destroys it.
apatheticonion 8y ago
Tried to run it on my site and got "Error: 403 from Lighthouse API: Forbidden"
ramshanker 8y ago
Error: 403 from Lighthouse API: Forbidden
voycey 8y ago
Still pissed that they registered .dev as a TLD
throwaway487548 8y ago
Which framework is this? Material-what? What is Google's Bootstrap alternative? It does not look like Angular (which is a J2EE all over again), at least. Update: I did some research cd material-components-web-codelabs/mdc-101/complete grep version package-lock.json |wc -l 943 No. Just no.
thetruthseeker1 8y ago
doesn’t work on http
robdodson 8y ago
Hey folks, I wanted to share a quick status update to let y'all know which issues we're seeing and working on. Apologies for the hiccups and thank you all for trying the beta! https://medium.com/dev-channel/web-dev-status-update-11-12-18-f9b42a693f65 https://medium.com/dev-channel/web-dev-status-update-11-12-1...
- jansan 8y ago
  Much appreciated, thanks!
codesternews 8y ago
Wow amazon.com results are quite impressive. Have not thought it has 95 performance.
TonnyGaric 8y ago
I get the message "Error: 500 from Lighthouse API: Internal Server Error" when I try to run audit for my personal website https://tonnygaric.com https://tonnygaric.com Anyone any clue why? Other websites I enter seem to run without a problem.
bananatron 8y ago
This is just lighthouse? You can run these tests in chrome under dev tools > audit.
bitofhope 8y ago
This is useless to me because I have a website, not a web application. I got a 46/100 on PWA which is astonishing because the site being tested is not a progressive web application at all. Imagine vim getting a 40/100 score in the category of web browsers. Weirdly good score. The accessibility audit is garbage as well. Apparently I should add an image to the site just so I can put an alt attribute in it. I should include audio so I could have a transcription to go with it. Not sure whether Lighthouse decided that 16px or 20px is less than 12px but apparently one of them is and makes up over 60% of the page. I understand this is not made for people who serve static HTML files and handmade CSS from ~/sites/ but I'm pretty sure I hate the kinds of sites this is designed for. Should have a custom splash screen? Respond with 200 when offline? What's next, I get points for breaking the back button too? Why is using HTTPS and redirecting HTTP to it a PWA thing? I'd hate to see the site that aces this audit.
- KevanM 8y ago
  This, so much this. The skew to web applications rather than websites for tooling has been very disappointin and myopic view of what a 'website' is. It would make sense if I could give it a root URL and then a robot progressively ran tests over a month and then reported back, but one URL is a drop in a vast ocean for most of us.
  - Yaggo 8y ago
    Properly made "web application" doesn't have to break the web. It can be curled, links work, back button works, etc. You just don't get any interactivity (besides links) without javascript, but it still works as browseable site (rendered server-side). You can have the cake & eat it. (I'm not saying that every application should behave like that. Often the extra work is not worth it. But a public, content-heavy site should behave like that, whether it was single-page app or tradiotionally implemented.)
    - pmlnr 8y ago
      This is called progressive enhancement and, sadly, nobody seems to be doing it any more.
xg15 8y ago
> Easily discoverable Ensure users can find your site easily through search. > Installable Be on users’ home screens with no need for an app store. It's nice that they educate devs on the rules they themselves came up with. I just wouldn't call it "how to build a better web" then.
vini 8y ago
Error: 500 from Lighthouse API: Internal Server Error Is all get when I try to test my website.
pasta 8y ago
Has anyone viewed the report? It's full of elements never used on the sites I checked. While it is still in beta (like all Google products are) don't take this serious.
thinkloop 8y ago
The results are significantly different from the lighthouse audit in chrome's web developer tools, the latter shows my site as PWA compatible with great performance whereas this tool shows that my site is not PWA ready and has medium performance.
seanhunter 8y ago
I'm amazed by how far off-base they have managed to make this. The recommendations are bizarrely inaccurate. 1)it says that my (black) text doesn't have sufficient contrast against my (white) background. 2)It says that my page could benefit from having more of its resources served by http 2 (more than 100% presumably). 3)It says that links should have a name (this is not supported by html5) 4)It says my (100% valid) robots.txt file is not valid 5)it says my 100% no javascript static webpage which isn't a PWA should return a 200 when offline. Not sure how they think I should do that.
zwaps 8y ago
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE WEBDEVS, STOP LOADING YOUR WEBSITE WITH CRAP TO MAKE THEM BETTER I fed a large news site that is not terrible to use into this, and it gave it 14/100 rating. This news site is perfectly fine, has a good design, good typography and loads without any scripts if you need it to. It loads quite fast. Among other things, Google recommends - Lazy loading: NOOOO, just load my document. I hate this bullcrap. It never works correctly and then you just get a laggy and slow scrolling site where you have to wait all the time you use it. It's a news site. Just load the whole thing, it takes a couple of ms but then the site is actually usable! It's an actual document you can scroll through. - Ask the user to install as an app, add offline usage etc? Why even? - Dynamically compress everything? YES GOOGLE, when saving 8kb per picture, but in the end we need to pull 10mb of javascript libraries from sixty different sources all over the web to even display a text with one small picture ITS ALL WORTH IT I don't make websites except my personal stuff. I understand you want to present your knowledge and skills. But please, the websites are getting worse and worse. The best way to present almost any information is in a classic html webpage. It wouldn't need to be like this, but almost any modern websdesign approach seemingly leads to slow, laggy and partly unusable websites, that do end up loading something, but often not the thing I actually want to read. I am actually trained now to feel a sense of relief if I come across a straight html website, just because the user experience is so terrible now thanks to javascript. As a consumer, I will continue to beg for simple websites that stay true to the idea of displaying a scrollable document with data and text. Please, only use all these animations, loadings, dynamics, off-site frameworks, custom browser controls and single page documents if you are making a) a portfolio b) an actual application that is mostly simple buttons and does not present significant amounts of text or data thank you its bad guys
- Zelphyr 8y ago
  I agree with you about lazy loading. It's just dumb. How is it better to give me a scaffold of a page before the content? The page may look nice but is unusable until the content has loaded. Why not just give me everything when it's ready? I've gotten into trouble for saying this before but things like recommending lazy loading is an example of Google imposing their wishes on the web and making it worse in the process.
intea 8y ago
Google only scores 80 in the SEO Category...
Whitestrake 8y ago
I find myself disappointed that they took away `.dev` as local development TLD, and this is what they start using it for.
masswerk 8y ago
Regarding accessibility: Are skip links still a thing, or has this been superseded by landmark roles? Is there still an advantage in using a link as compared to selecting a region? Edit: Meaning, if I have already a main region, does adding a skip link to main actually complicate things?
zimpenfish 8y ago
Bizarrely refuses to use HTTP/2 to my nginx (curl, Firefox, Safari all use HTTP/2 happily) and then dings me for it. Seems a bit unfair.
RugnirViking 8y ago
The hacker news homepage gets a 23 on accessibility (Idk I mean there are probably some issues I hadn't thought of but the fact that its primariliy no-nonsense text makes it quite accessible by default) It does however get 100 on performance (quite rightly) The PWA score is around 50 but most of the complaints are really silly. It almost makes me wonder if the entire category of PWA is silly. Finally, I checked GOV.UK, the website so lauded here on hacker news as of late. It also got around 58 on PWA - what is the point? If those complaints for PWA actually meant anything, surely they could fit into one of accessibility, best practises, or performance.
bhartzer 8y ago
There's so much wrong with this report, it can be confusing to many people. For example, some of what they're calling "SEO" really has nothing to do with SEO. It should be checking: - if the page is crawlable - if there is a valid title tag - if there is a valid meta description tag - if there is a valid canonical tag But instead, it checks for a valid viewport meta tag? And if the font sizes are legible? I could see that it might be an issue if the site is hiding text on the page, but viewport and font sizes really have nothing to do with SEO.
- hajile 8y ago
  I could be wrong, but I thought these were things Google used when ranking sites (especially for mobile).
Sargos 8y ago
These comments really highlight how Hacker News is slowly devolving into Slashdot with a stuck in the past mentality and no constructive criticism just groupthink attacks on "stuff we don't like or understand".
- dang 8y ago
  Please don't make this place even worse by posting low-information rants. Instead, provide correct information, so we can all learn something. If you don't want to do that or don't have time, it's simple to just not post. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
progressiveweb 8y ago
My question is, why do we need a React/Redux for PWAs all the time? It is slow on cellular data, freezes phones without the latest Chrome, all in all feels laggy compared to a native app. The thing is you can easily add "Progressiveness" to your website with Service workers and using open source libraries to add instant on-page navigation without repaint. The only place I find an SPA is appropriate is anywhere else but e-commerce websites, which is one of the main target of Google's PWA initiative, to build a collective resistance to Amazon, which has one of the highest converting pages. Your conversion rates will naturally go up when people are able to checkout quickly with minimal cognitive load, this does not mean that a React app is appropriate or feasible, especially when e-commerce businesses that rely on older phones, when smartphones are approaching 1000 USD
mangatmodi 8y ago
The tool is having scaling issues due to their seemingly unexpected fame on HN - https://medium.com/dev-channel/web-dev-status-update-11-12-18-f9b42a693f65 https://medium.com/dev-channel/web-dev-status-update-11-12-1...
zwaps 8y ago
PWA = Poorly made Web Application for those who don't know
yoz-y 8y ago
I have a question. How can I really figure out whether my (static) website uses http2? The google audit tells me that I should use http2 for all of my resources but loading my site in Safari or Chrome shows me that it uses the h2 protocol. Or are these unrelated? Weirdly it also points out that my elements have non-unique Ids which is false and the list of failing elements shows that, it looks like they are stopping their search at the colon character, but they should not.

Web.dev by Google

699 points by mxschumacher 8y ago

ithrewthat4351 8y ago

How about we just give back .dev for registration free? :)

empyrical 8y ago
They are opening it up now: https://get.dev/ https://get.dev/

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

pestkranker 8y ago

It's actually Lighthouse under the hood.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

iamunr 8y ago

So sad to see .dev go. :(

CydeWeys 8y ago
Precisely the opposite -- it's going to be available for open registration soon. https://get.dev/ https://get.dev/
- partiallypro 8y ago
  Do you have to use Google's registrar service? That page isn't clear, and if you have to use Google's service, I don't view that as a good precedent.
  - CydeWeys 8y ago
    No, it will be available across a wide range of registrars, similar to .app. You can see the full list of participating registrars for our existing TLDs here: https://www.registry.google/register-a-domain/ https://www.registry.google/register-a-domain/
  - bduerst 8y ago
    Correct me if I'm wrong, but registries can't let single registrars have exclusive access to TLDs. If Alphabet/Google were to do this it would be antitrust, and they could lose their dual registry/registrar status.
Kagerjay 8y ago
.test it is then

cyberferret 8y ago

Getting Chrome SSL warnings on both the OP link and https://get.dev/ https://get.dev/ Doesn't really evoke confidence, if this is a Google initiative. Can someone post a short precis as to what this is about for those of us who cannot visit the URLs? UPDATE: Apologies - My bad, not Google's fault. I had a local Valet/NGINX redirect for local .dev domains setup for Laravel development projects that was causing the issue.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
CydeWeys 8y ago
Can you post a screenshot of the certificate you're seeing? It sounds like you're being MITMed. It works fine in Chrome for me. Oh, and this is definitely a valid Google initiative. Source: Work for Google, am involved in this.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- cyberferret 8y ago
  Ah, OK, I think I worked out what is happening. I have a valet service running for local Laravel development which is redirecting local .dev subdomains to Valet instances on my iMac! Apologies for that - I will shut down the Valet service and try again.
  - CydeWeys 8y ago
    Valet fixed this last year. Recommend that you update: https://github.com/laravel/valet/pull/436 https://github.com/laravel/valet/pull/436 Although that might only change the default for new installs; you might still need to change it for existing installs. I'm not sure; I've never used Laravel.
traek 8y ago
I'm seeing a valid cert issued to Google.

paulddraper 8y ago

Will someone please elucidate which Google resources are still relevant? * https://web.dev/ https://web.dev/ * https://developers.google.com/speed/ https://developers.google.com/speed/ * https://developers.google.com/web/ https://developers.google.com/web/ (including https://developers.google.com/web/tools/lighthouse/ https://developers.google.com/web/tools/lighthouse/)

robdodson 8y ago
Heyo! One of the web.dev devs here. The new web.dev site is an experiment from our team to see if we can improve the interactivity of our docs. We link to developers.google.com/web in a number of places. Over time, if folks seem to enjoy the web.dev model, we may explore moving more of our docs over there. But for now it's just a fun experiment
- chimen 8y ago
  I like that material design. Can you share the tech stack it was built with?

weinzierl 8y ago

It only accepts https URLs. Lighthouse in the DevTools can do both, http and https.

robdodson 8y ago
Yep that's our mistake (one of the web.dev devs). We auto added https to every URL. Oops! Gonna fix that as soon as we are out of our code freeze
- danillonunes 8y ago
  > one of the web.dev devs web.dev^2
  - Jaruzel 8y ago
    What dev does a web.dev dev when a web.dev dev devs?
- onion2k 8y ago
  I assumed that was intentional to push everyone to use https.
- microcolonel 8y ago
  Confused about the purpose of a "code freeze", I guess you're focused on monitoring for abuse, so don't want to go back to working on features/functionality yet?

yandrypozo 8y ago

I just ran their audit to https://mail.google.com https://mail.google.com, you guys (googlers) need to speed up your websites first, Gmail is terrible slow lately, just saying...

partiallypro 8y ago
Google's pagespeed service is hot garbage. You can do things that make the page load significantly slower and get a perfect score than if you had a lower pagespeed score with a much faster page load. I also find it strange how I can get an A on every other page speed service, including GTMetrix, but get an F on Google's tes(s). Totally useless.
- billyhoffman 8y ago
  Isn't GTMetrix just a combined Page Speed Insights and YSlow audit?
  - partiallypro 8y ago
    It uses an older version of Pagespeed, yes.
  - josefresco 8y ago
    I never pay attention to the "grades" only the data, especially the waterfall graph/data. The grades are ridiculous, and mostly meant to cause alarm. You can score 100/100 on almost every test, but get a "D" overall because you scored poorly on 1 or 2 tests. It's great tool for techs, but in the hands of a client almost every result/score appears terrible.
- wild_preference 8y ago
  Meh, these tests are just good ways to find obvious problems with your site. Fixating on the overall score seems like an indication of a different problem. For example, you can't change the caching behavior of google-analytics.js, and it's usually intractable to split apart your CSS to optimize for above-the-fold content. Oh well, you didn't get a perfect score. Stay practical.

iambateman 8y ago

This looks kinda cool. I have a hard time believing this is "for web developers" when most web developers used `.dev` for local development, which was broken because Google decided they wanted to own `.dev` for themselves. Bad taste in my mouth.

crooked-v 8y ago
> when most web developers used `.dev` for local development Most web developers were wrong. The reserved TLD for local development has been .localhost since 1999.
- CydeWeys 8y ago
  Or .test. See RFC 2606: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2606 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2606
  - shkkmo 8y ago
    I think .test is the TLD is the one most likely to work as expected as for all use cases as .localhost might be expected to only ever point to the loopback IP address. If anyone does something more complicated (like using a vagrant private network ip address), you might find some tools break unexpectedly. Edit: the newer version of the docs have more details (in section 6) on the differences to be expected between test, localhost, example and invalid domains. see: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6761 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6761
NelsonMinar 8y ago
It might be time to let this one go.
- Sir_Substance 8y ago
  Some of us are still tickets once a month or so over this. Kinda hard to let it go.
- omeid2 8y ago

crooked-v 8y ago

I wonder how many things will break when .dev domains become broadly available.

ripexz 8y ago
They're already "broken" on Chrome for a few versions now, we switched all `.dev`s to `.localhost` in dev environments at my company.
- geerlingguy 8y ago
  I've switched all my stuff to .test, since that domain doesn't cause as many weird issues with some routers, proxies, OS networking bugs, dumb regex, etc. Also, .test is reserved for testing/local forever, so it won't suffer the same fate as .dev.

billyhoffman 8y ago

This is powered by Google Lighthouse, with the benefit of it being done via a web UI instead of a Dev Tools Audit. Which is both good and bad. Good because Lighthouse has some reasonable best practices to follow, and a few good performance timings, so lowering the barriers of entry is nice. Bad because many of Lighthouses best practices aren't always applicable (our major media customers constantly say "stop telling me a need a #$%ing Service Worker!"). And while Speed Index and Start Render are great, Time-to-interactive, First CPU idle, and estimated keyboard latency are still fairly fluid/poorly defined, and of different value. This all also overlooks the value that something like the Browser's User Timings provides (Stop trying to figure out what's a "contentful" or "meaningful" paint, and let me just use performance.mark to tell you "my hero image finished and the CTA click handler registered at X"), which Lighthouse doesn't surface up. What is interesting is the monitoring side. WebPageTest, Lighthouse, Page Speed Insights, YSlow, etc are just point-in-time assessments that is largely commoditized. Tracking this stuff over time and extracting meaningful data is valuable, so that's pretty cool. Disclaimer: I work in the web performance space. People replace homegrown Lighthouse, puppeteer, or WPT instances with our commercial software, so I'm biased. However I like a lot of the raising awareness and trail blazing about what Performance/UX means that Google is doing.

arkitaip 8y ago
Oh god that Service Worker bs. It's like how Yahoo's performance profiler penalized you for not using a CDN on a single page site.
vntok 8y ago
Why don't you want to implement a basic service worker? A couple of cache strategies among these ones seem like a net positive? https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/instant-and-offline/offline-cookbook/ https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/instant-and-o... (ex: "Cache, falling back to network" for CDN'd libraries, "Cache then network" for content like news articles)
- dbbk 8y ago
  Standard caching headers should be enough?

tinyvm 8y ago

Google is really pushing Hard on PWA. My biggest concern is the support outside of chrome. While other browsers tend to come on pair with chrome in terms of features , chrome right now is the only one which supports PWA as "native" app.. Windows announced support for PWA natively a while ago [0] but there has been no news since then. On Apple side it's silence radio...iOS have some support but for Mac it seems unlikely to happen... [0]https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2018/02/06/welcoming-progressive-web-apps-edge-windows-10/ https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2018/02/06/welcoming-pro...

bhauer 8y ago
FWIW, the official Twitter desktop app for Windows 10 is a PWA and it works great (well, as well as any official Twitter app has worked in my assessment; not as well as third-party apps from their hey-day, but that's a different story). I also use the Starbucks PWA (app.starbucks.com) and it mostly works well. Again, it seems to work as well as their native apps.
pjmlp 8y ago
> Windows announced support for PWA natively a while ago [0] but there has been no news since then. There have been news since February. UWP hosted apps got replaced with PWAs, including access to UWP APIs if signed, documentation and tooling support is now available. https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/pwa https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/pwa https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/progressive-web-apps/get-started https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/progressive-... This is what made me have another look at PWAs, start experimenting with them and starting to see, that for plain CRUD applications PWAs are probably the way to go.
ubersoldat2k7 8y ago
The funny/sad thing about PWA and how broken it's on iOS right now, is that the first iPhone was supposed to work with PWA. I'm not sure if it was Jobs' vision or they didn't have something good to offer for native devs. Safari has been a joke for long time now.
- 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

d--b 8y ago

Interesting that they’re not selling AMP in there. They most likely didnt dare

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

shinryuu 8y ago

I get that the site can't be reached.. ? Is it a valid site?

CydeWeys 8y ago
Yes, it is a valid site. Looks like you've got something wrong with your local or network config that needs to be fixed.
danillonunes 8y ago
It has been a common practice for devs to setup a local DNS server that points any *.dev domain to localhost. Maybe you did it (or installed some tool that did it) and forgot.
- sandov 8y ago
  >or installed some tool that did it I would love to see an example of this. Software-gore.

modzu 8y ago

is this a joke?

k__ 8y ago

Only works for HTTPS.

robdodson 8y ago
Yep that's our bad. We accidentally started prefixing all of the urls with https we've fixed the bug but haven't shipped it yet cuz we're in code freeze

NelsonMinar 8y ago

Talk about breaking the back button! Do a measurement on a website. Then click one of the Guide links like "Links do not have a discernible name". Page navigates away from the report to some documentation. Click back, report is gone. I get it, it's a single page webapp. But if you do that you need to make all the simple navigations open new tabs. There is a "open link in new button" icon next to each link, but that's really not good enough.

robdodson 8y ago
Ah yeah that's something we want to fix. If you're signed in it keeps the report around but if you're signed-out it's stateless. It's definitely on our to-do list to fix.
- NelsonMinar 8y ago
  Fair enough! Thanks for the reply.
- koboll 8y ago
  Maybe just throw on a target='_blank', no need to do anything fancy
  - sniuff 8y ago
    it's stateless
- dmitriid 8y ago
  > on our to-do list to fix This is sort of representative of web.dev vs the rest of Google. Read the rest of the comments, seriously. I would be very discouraged to release this web site when the rest of the company is vehemently opposed to any of the practices listed there.
- softawre 8y ago
  It's made worse by the fact that you can't easily read the recommendation without clicking on it.

jjordan 8y ago

Must be nice to have all the money in the world to purchase any domain you want.

amaccuish 8y ago

ICANN were foolish to go down the new TLD root. Why should Google have ownership over web.dev, and not mozilla (MDN) or w3c?

yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
Money. And possibly timing.
acheron 8y ago
Foolish how? Sure, it kind of ruins DNS, but ICANN made a lot of money, and isn’t that the important thing?
voycey 8y ago
Totally agree, Money talks!
Jaruzel 8y ago
And lets not talk about .Amazon being given to Amazon (the company) and not Amazon (the rainforest).

keyle 8y ago

Wow. From the people that have been botching the web for 20 years... I mean it's only recently that they've started getting their things together. And arguably their flat design isn't always usable. Now let's talk speed....

stabbles 8y ago

Try and compare cnn.com with lite.cnn.com. Or (if you're Dutch) compare nos.nl with noslite.nl. All hail text only news websites.

mangoleaf 8y ago
Agreed! I love the text only sites. I would add text.npr.org to the list also. I am very tired of sites that spill media and JavaScript all over the place and add no real value, just to slow the site down or to make it completely unusable. A typical site of mine breaks all the rules of current UI design. [1] [1] http://vqRN.com http://vqRN.com

NKCSS 8y ago

I think I broke Google > Error: 500 from Lighthouse API: Internal Server Error

chrismorgan 8y ago
I tried a couple of other sites first, successfully, then I tried asking it about https://web.dev https://web.dev, and that’s when it fell over.

technion 8y ago

Given this says it's in beta, can anyone see where I can report a bug?

rblion 8y ago

won't load...

modernerd 8y ago

Web.dev looks incredible for educating web developers, exposing Lighthouse to devs who aren't already familiar with it, and for automating basic website testing over time. But it will be a nightmare for support teams working at any kind of web service. As Google doesn't provide support for this tooling and site owners invariably fixate on the scores it provides, product support teams for everything from WordPress themes to CDNs end up fielding support questions that Google should be helping with via resources pitched at the non-technical folks who inevitably use these tools (as well as, you know, help from an actual human support team). As it stands, support teams will now be inundated with questions unrelated to their product from customers who have no interest or technical background to read the current educational sections of web.dev, and whose time would be better spent crafting landing pages, great content, or reducing the 38 social plugins they're using instead of making all the dials turn green. I can already foresee the support requests from the web.dev scores: “Google says my WordPress site isn't installable. Where's the option for that in your theme?” “Your website says Cloudflare improves load time. But my first meaningful paint time went up by 1.5 seconds after setting it up! I'm going to write bad reviews about you.” “Google says I need to theme my browser's address bar to match my branding. I added that tag they mention but don't see any change in my browser.” It's great to build awareness of ways to make the web faster and better, but it needs to be backed with guidance that's pitched at the ability of the people who will be using these automated testing tools. For example, why not detect the technology behind the site and — for stuff like WordPress — recommend plugins or other tech-specific resources that could help fix problems like lack of image lazy-loading? There are lots of ways education could be enhanced for non-developers.

exodust 8y ago
But it's a resource for web devs, mostly used by web devs. Reinforced by the web.dev domain name, which surprised me. I've never seen .dev domain before. All audit tools make recommendations that many of us will ignore. I have zero intention of using webp images for example. I don't think your claim that "nightmares" will happen is warranted. Shiny new site audit tools are fun. Enjoy it, there's no nightmare!

alib 8y ago

This site didn't load properly in Firefox on a Samsung Galaxy S8 just now, and the accessibility section is "coming soon". I'm sorry Google, but if you're letting key basics like this slip... Accessibility is not a bolt-on for afters, and chrome isn't the only web browser. Deep down you know this too. Those who preach are held to higher standards, and you've let yourselves down badly here.

magicalist 8y ago
> This site didn't load properly in Firefox on a Samsung Galaxy S8 just now Check your extensions. It loads fine for me. > you've let yourselves down badly here. ...because an article on accessibility is "coming soon"?
- alib 8y ago
  I can't replicate it in private browsing. I'm not running any mobile extensions and my internet is as good as it comes. First time I loaded it the blue line at the top was there for ages. I was scrolling the site for a good 20 secs marvelling at the irony of a site teaching performance not performing. It felt like something to do with the service worker not working. The cookie notice only appeared after I refreshed. Now it works fine, and loads fine each time. So it was something to do with the initial caching of assets. And yes, the accessibility section coming soon sends the wrong message very subtly but powerfully. It's something we all need to be better at, and when you've got the resources of Google there just isn't any excuse. Those two small words on that missing section quietly absolve us all. Because if Google can't do it right, why should we? It just isn't good enough, so yes, they have let themselves and our community down. I know they're strong words, but someone needed to say it.
  - magicalist 8y ago
    > The cookie notice only appeared after I refreshed Maybe it's a geo thing. Are you in Europe? I see no cookie notice (US). > I know they're strong words, but someone needed to say it. Eh, it needs to be there but don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. It's apparently in "beta" and according to this hn thread robdodson is working on it, so odds are the accessibility section will be handled just fine. Regardless > Those who preach are held to higher standards is a bad take. You can criticize a tutorial site without standing on such a flimsy soapbox.

arendtio 8y ago

> Accessible to all - Coming Soon Probably the frontend joke of the last two decades... And a bad one too.

fhdhehfhzhe 8y ago

Looks like this - https://webhint.io https://webhint.io Why not collaborate with the people who’ve made this first, google?

feb 8y ago
The similarities with webhint are striking. For example they have mostly the same categories : * Performance (exactly same as webhint) * PWA (exactly same name as webhint) * Accessibility (exactly same as webhint) * Best Practices * SEO Webhint also has categories Interoperability and Security. Not sure what web.dev uses for those.
- fhdhehfhzhe 8y ago
  Plus it’s open source and welcomes contributions https://webhint.io/docs/contributor-guide/ https://webhint.io/docs/contributor-guide/
magicalist 8y ago
As others have noted, looks like this is just running Lighthouse? That's been around for a long time.
- softawre 8y ago
  From webhint's about/faq: > webhint’s development started inside the Microsoft Edge team
  - magicalist 8y ago
    > webhint’s development started inside the Microsoft Edge team ...was that before lighthouse started? And was open source and seem viable at the time?

stupidbird 8y ago

I can't wait for one of the executives in my company to run into this, understand nothing but the numbers, and then complain about our numbers not being higher despite the fact that half of these metrics aren't applicable to our web app. I already have a boilerplate response to "why isn't our google pagespeed score higher" that I copy and paste. I know Google's happy about performance nagging, but I wish they were better at knowing what is/isn't applicable.

kaycebasques 8y ago
I agree that this is a problem. See my other comment in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18442686 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18442686
- stupidbird 8y ago
  Thanks for reading through the comments. I do agree that some sort of "not all these metrics may be applicable to your architecture, please consult an engineer" would go a long way. I left a toxic work environment at one point where I was literally yelled at because I was claiming to know our company's situation better than Google's pagespeed tools. Needless to say, that wasn't the only problem with that job... but it's frustrating.

hornetblack 8y ago

"Imagine if your favorite game took forever to load because you were on a slow network connection, it wouldn't be your favorite game for very long. " I can inform you that games I play take forever to load on slow networks. (Overwatch, Darksouls). Although I guess it's not downloading the game. It's just trying to login to the servers.

koib 8y ago

What if there's a login/auth wall before getting to the actual page you want to test?

skunkworker 8y ago

If you have an old version of Pow installed. Make sure to either upgrade to Puma-dev (Which moves .dev to .test, the correct subdomain for local machine testing) or uninstall it first.

scrame 8y ago

I tried my rather large work website and it was unable to fetch it after a couple tries. Also this is the same company that brought us AMP and didn't use closing tags on their landing page to "save bandwidth", and tried to push a java -> JavaScript nightmare of a gui toolkit. I don't get why they are trying to push for this unless it's trying to strongarm devs into making more shitty AMP pages.

hardwaresofton 8y ago

In case you're wondering what's in it for google with PWAs/App manifests/"Installable apps"[0], it's answered in another recent HN post[1] and comment[2]. I wrote and deleted a pretty vitriolic comment about not trusting google as stewards of anything, people who care about the user (outside of selling data/access to the user millions of times a second), but I couldn't figure out why they would push app manifests (the only interesting part of the actual comment). [0]: https://web.dev/installable https://web.dev/installable [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18434639 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18434639 [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18435412 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18435412

artiya4u 8y ago

Error: 403 from Lighthouse API: Forbidden If you're using Cloudflare.

apatheticonion 8y ago
Or cloudfront
guessmyname 8y ago
No, the CDN doesn’t matters. It is happening with Google’s services as well. See my report here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18437749 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18437749

crazygringo 8y ago

Why am I getting: Error: 403 from Lighthouse API: Forbidden whenever I try to run the audit on any of my sites hosted on Digital Ocean? They all load normally in my browser... Anyone else having the same issue?

prophesi 8y ago
Yep, all of my DO hosted sites share the same fate.
chaostheory 8y ago
I'm on AWS. Same issue.
guessmyname 8y ago
Even attempting to scan “www.google.com” returns a 403: curl -XPOST \ -H "Accept: */*" \ -H "Connection: keep-alive" \ -H "Accept-Language: en-us" \ -H "Origin: https://web.dev" \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ -H "Referer: https://web.dev/measure" \ -H "Host: lighthouse-dot-webdotdevsite.appspot.com" \ -H "User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/537.36" \ --data-binary '{"url":"https://www.google.com","replace":true,"save":false}' \ "https://lighthouse-dot-webdotdevsite.appspot.com/lh/newaudit" {"errors":"Error: 403 from Lighthouse API: Forbidden"}
judge2020 8y ago
Probably an issue with the actual scanning service. web.dev itself gets the same error.
nacs 8y ago
I have a feeling they've hit some kind of API limit for their own Lighthouse service ironically.
ganeshkrishnan 8y ago
I got a "no such site" first and then this 403 error.
nodesocket 8y ago

LolNoGenerics 8y ago

Over a decade of experience... with service workers! Nice trick, leave time travel to spock et al.

nh2 8y ago

> Accessible to all The website itself doesn't seem to take that too seriously. For example, it loses scroll position when navigating: * go there from HN * scroll down a bit * press the Back button in the browser to go back to HN * press the Forward button in the browser to go to the site again * you are now scrolled the very top again, instead of where you scrolled to Tested in curren Chrome and Firefox on Linux. Also note how HN doesn't have this problem, it will remember your scroll position so you can continue reading where you left off. Browsers are smart, they have accessibility built-in. Too clever JavaScriptery destroys it.

apatheticonion 8y ago

Tried to run it on my site and got "Error: 403 from Lighthouse API: Forbidden"

ramshanker 8y ago

Error: 403 from Lighthouse API: Forbidden

voycey 8y ago

Still pissed that they registered .dev as a TLD

throwaway487548 8y ago

Which framework is this? Material-what? What is Google's Bootstrap alternative? It does not look like Angular (which is a J2EE all over again), at least. Update: I did some research cd material-components-web-codelabs/mdc-101/complete grep version package-lock.json |wc -l 943 No. Just no.

thetruthseeker1 8y ago

doesn’t work on http

robdodson 8y ago

Hey folks, I wanted to share a quick status update to let y'all know which issues we're seeing and working on. Apologies for the hiccups and thank you all for trying the beta! https://medium.com/dev-channel/web-dev-status-update-11-12-18-f9b42a693f65 https://medium.com/dev-channel/web-dev-status-update-11-12-1...

jansan 8y ago
Much appreciated, thanks!

codesternews 8y ago

Wow amazon.com results are quite impressive. Have not thought it has 95 performance.

TonnyGaric 8y ago

I get the message "Error: 500 from Lighthouse API: Internal Server Error" when I try to run audit for my personal website https://tonnygaric.com https://tonnygaric.com Anyone any clue why? Other websites I enter seem to run without a problem.

bananatron 8y ago

This is just lighthouse? You can run these tests in chrome under dev tools > audit.

bitofhope 8y ago

This is useless to me because I have a website, not a web application. I got a 46/100 on PWA which is astonishing because the site being tested is not a progressive web application at all. Imagine vim getting a 40/100 score in the category of web browsers. Weirdly good score. The accessibility audit is garbage as well. Apparently I should add an image to the site just so I can put an alt attribute in it. I should include audio so I could have a transcription to go with it. Not sure whether Lighthouse decided that 16px or 20px is less than 12px but apparently one of them is and makes up over 60% of the page. I understand this is not made for people who serve static HTML files and handmade CSS from ~/sites/ but I'm pretty sure I hate the kinds of sites this is designed for. Should have a custom splash screen? Respond with 200 when offline? What's next, I get points for breaking the back button too? Why is using HTTPS and redirecting HTTP to it a PWA thing? I'd hate to see the site that aces this audit.

KevanM 8y ago
This, so much this. The skew to web applications rather than websites for tooling has been very disappointin and myopic view of what a 'website' is. It would make sense if I could give it a root URL and then a robot progressively ran tests over a month and then reported back, but one URL is a drop in a vast ocean for most of us.
- Yaggo 8y ago
  Properly made "web application" doesn't have to break the web. It can be curled, links work, back button works, etc. You just don't get any interactivity (besides links) without javascript, but it still works as browseable site (rendered server-side). You can have the cake & eat it. (I'm not saying that every application should behave like that. Often the extra work is not worth it. But a public, content-heavy site should behave like that, whether it was single-page app or tradiotionally implemented.)
  - pmlnr 8y ago
    This is called progressive enhancement and, sadly, nobody seems to be doing it any more.

xg15 8y ago

> Easily discoverable Ensure users can find your site easily through search. > Installable Be on users’ home screens with no need for an app store. It's nice that they educate devs on the rules they themselves came up with. I just wouldn't call it "how to build a better web" then.

vini 8y ago

Error: 500 from Lighthouse API: Internal Server Error Is all get when I try to test my website.

pasta 8y ago

Has anyone viewed the report? It's full of elements never used on the sites I checked. While it is still in beta (like all Google products are) don't take this serious.

thinkloop 8y ago

The results are significantly different from the lighthouse audit in chrome's web developer tools, the latter shows my site as PWA compatible with great performance whereas this tool shows that my site is not PWA ready and has medium performance.

seanhunter 8y ago

I'm amazed by how far off-base they have managed to make this. The recommendations are bizarrely inaccurate. 1)it says that my (black) text doesn't have sufficient contrast against my (white) background. 2)It says that my page could benefit from having more of its resources served by http 2 (more than 100% presumably). 3)It says that links should have a name (this is not supported by html5) 4)It says my (100% valid) robots.txt file is not valid 5)it says my 100% no javascript static webpage which isn't a PWA should return a 200 when offline. Not sure how they think I should do that.

zwaps 8y ago

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE WEBDEVS, STOP LOADING YOUR WEBSITE WITH CRAP TO MAKE THEM BETTER I fed a large news site that is not terrible to use into this, and it gave it 14/100 rating. This news site is perfectly fine, has a good design, good typography and loads without any scripts if you need it to. It loads quite fast. Among other things, Google recommends - Lazy loading: NOOOO, just load my document. I hate this bullcrap. It never works correctly and then you just get a laggy and slow scrolling site where you have to wait all the time you use it. It's a news site. Just load the whole thing, it takes a couple of ms but then the site is actually usable! It's an actual document you can scroll through. - Ask the user to install as an app, add offline usage etc? Why even? - Dynamically compress everything? YES GOOGLE, when saving 8kb per picture, but in the end we need to pull 10mb of javascript libraries from sixty different sources all over the web to even display a text with one small picture ITS ALL WORTH IT I don't make websites except my personal stuff. I understand you want to present your knowledge and skills. But please, the websites are getting worse and worse. The best way to present almost any information is in a classic html webpage. It wouldn't need to be like this, but almost any modern websdesign approach seemingly leads to slow, laggy and partly unusable websites, that do end up loading something, but often not the thing I actually want to read. I am actually trained now to feel a sense of relief if I come across a straight html website, just because the user experience is so terrible now thanks to javascript. As a consumer, I will continue to beg for simple websites that stay true to the idea of displaying a scrollable document with data and text. Please, only use all these animations, loadings, dynamics, off-site frameworks, custom browser controls and single page documents if you are making a) a portfolio b) an actual application that is mostly simple buttons and does not present significant amounts of text or data thank you its bad guys

Zelphyr 8y ago
I agree with you about lazy loading. It's just dumb. How is it better to give me a scaffold of a page before the content? The page may look nice but is unusable until the content has loaded. Why not just give me everything when it's ready? I've gotten into trouble for saying this before but things like recommending lazy loading is an example of Google imposing their wishes on the web and making it worse in the process.

intea 8y ago

Google only scores 80 in the SEO Category...

Whitestrake 8y ago

I find myself disappointed that they took away `.dev` as local development TLD, and this is what they start using it for.

masswerk 8y ago

Regarding accessibility: Are skip links still a thing, or has this been superseded by landmark roles? Is there still an advantage in using a link as compared to selecting a region? Edit: Meaning, if I have already a main region, does adding a skip link to main actually complicate things?

zimpenfish 8y ago

Bizarrely refuses to use HTTP/2 to my nginx (curl, Firefox, Safari all use HTTP/2 happily) and then dings me for it. Seems a bit unfair.

RugnirViking 8y ago

The hacker news homepage gets a 23 on accessibility (Idk I mean there are probably some issues I hadn't thought of but the fact that its primariliy no-nonsense text makes it quite accessible by default) It does however get 100 on performance (quite rightly) The PWA score is around 50 but most of the complaints are really silly. It almost makes me wonder if the entire category of PWA is silly. Finally, I checked GOV.UK, the website so lauded here on hacker news as of late. It also got around 58 on PWA - what is the point? If those complaints for PWA actually meant anything, surely they could fit into one of accessibility, best practises, or performance.

bhartzer 8y ago

There's so much wrong with this report, it can be confusing to many people. For example, some of what they're calling "SEO" really has nothing to do with SEO. It should be checking: - if the page is crawlable - if there is a valid title tag - if there is a valid meta description tag - if there is a valid canonical tag But instead, it checks for a valid viewport meta tag? And if the font sizes are legible? I could see that it might be an issue if the site is hiding text on the page, but viewport and font sizes really have nothing to do with SEO.

hajile 8y ago
I could be wrong, but I thought these were things Google used when ranking sites (especially for mobile).

Sargos 8y ago

These comments really highlight how Hacker News is slowly devolving into Slashdot with a stuck in the past mentality and no constructive criticism just groupthink attacks on "stuff we don't like or understand".

dang 8y ago
Please don't make this place even worse by posting low-information rants. Instead, provide correct information, so we can all learn something. If you don't want to do that or don't have time, it's simple to just not post. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

progressiveweb 8y ago

My question is, why do we need a React/Redux for PWAs all the time? It is slow on cellular data, freezes phones without the latest Chrome, all in all feels laggy compared to a native app. The thing is you can easily add "Progressiveness" to your website with Service workers and using open source libraries to add instant on-page navigation without repaint. The only place I find an SPA is appropriate is anywhere else but e-commerce websites, which is one of the main target of Google's PWA initiative, to build a collective resistance to Amazon, which has one of the highest converting pages. Your conversion rates will naturally go up when people are able to checkout quickly with minimal cognitive load, this does not mean that a React app is appropriate or feasible, especially when e-commerce businesses that rely on older phones, when smartphones are approaching 1000 USD

mangatmodi 8y ago

The tool is having scaling issues due to their seemingly unexpected fame on HN - https://medium.com/dev-channel/web-dev-status-update-11-12-18-f9b42a693f65 https://medium.com/dev-channel/web-dev-status-update-11-12-1...

zwaps 8y ago

PWA = Poorly made Web Application for those who don't know

yoz-y 8y ago

I have a question. How can I really figure out whether my (static) website uses http2? The google audit tells me that I should use http2 for all of my resources but loading my site in Safari or Chrome shows me that it uses the h2 protocol. Or are these unrelated? Weirdly it also points out that my elements have non-unique Ids which is false and the list of failing elements shows that, it looks like they are stopping their search at the colon character, but they should not.