In a recent HTTPArchive Almanac article on the use of CMS on a global scale, the author mentioned that all platforms score high on first input delay (FID), which is a core Web Vitals metric, and that Google is developing a new Indicator, one might think that the indicator may replace First Input Delay (FID).
HTTPArchive publishes several articles about the state of the network every year. Chapter 16 is about the content management system (CMS). This article was written by the back-end group manager and the head of the Web performance Wix engineer, and was reviewed and analyzed by multiple Google employees and others.
This article puts forward an interesting point about how the first input delay indicator loses meaning, and mentions how Google develops new indicators.
First input delay
Core Web Vitals is a set of user experience indicators designed to provide users with a snapshot of web page performance, and first input delay (FID) is one of these indicators.
FID measures the browser’s response speed to the user’s interaction with the website, such as the time it takes for a response to occur when the user clicks a button on the website.
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The thing about FID is that all major content management systems, such as WordPress, Wix, Drupal, etc., have lightning FID scores.
Everyone has won the FID trophy
The article first mentioned that most CMS FID scores are very good. The low-scoring platforms still have relatively high scores, only 5 percentage points behind.
The author wrote:
“FID is very suitable for most CMSs on the desktop, and all platforms have a 100% perfect score. Most CMSs also provide a good mobile FID of over 90%, with the exception of Bitrix and Joomla, where only 83% and 85% of sources have Good FID.”
What’s happening with FID is that it is basically an indicator that everyone has won a trophy. If almost all websites score very well, if everyone wins a trophy, then this means that the indicator does not have much reason to exist, because the goal of repairing this part of the user experience has been reached.
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Then, the article mentioned how Google (Chrome team) currently creates a new metric to measure responsiveness and response delay.
The article continues:
“Almost all platforms have managed to provide a good FID, and this fact has recently raised questions about the strictness of this indicator.
The Chrome team recently published an article detailing the idea of having better response metrics in the future. “
Enter response delay and complete event duration
This article is linked to a Google article recently published on Web.dev with the title, Feedback needed: an experimental response indicator.
The important part of this article is that it reveals that Google is working on a new input latency indicator. Understanding this indicator can provide a good start for future preparations.
The point of understanding this new metric is that it does not just measure a single interaction. It is measuring individual interaction groups as part of user actions.
Although the article cited in HTTPArchive cited an article from November 2021 that asked the publisher to provide feedback, this new indicator has been in development for some time.
A sort of June 2021 Web.dev article These objectives of the new measurement are outlined:
“Consider the responsiveness of all user input (not just the first one)
Capture the full duration of each event (not just the delay).
Combine events that occur as part of the same logical user interaction, and define the delay of that interaction as the maximum duration of all events.
Create a total score for all interactions that occur on the page throughout its life cycle. “
The Web.dev article pointed out that the goal is to design a better indicator that includes more meaningful user experience measurements.
“We hope to design an indicator to better capture the end-to-end latency of a single event and provide a more comprehensive picture of the overall responsiveness of a page throughout its life cycle.
…With this new indicator, we plan to extend it to capture the complete event duration, from initial user input to drawing the next frame after all event handlers have run.
We also plan to measure interactions rather than individual events. Interaction is a group of events dispatched as part of the same logical user gesture (for example: pointer down, click, pointer up). “
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This is also explained:
“The event duration refers to the time from the hardware timestamp of the event to the execution of the next drawing after the event is processed.
But if the event does not cause any updates, the duration will be from the hardware timestamp of the event to the time we are sure it will not cause any updates. “
Two methods of interaction delay measurement
Web.dev explained that Chrome engineers are exploring two ways to measure interaction latency:
- Maximum event duration
- Total event duration
Maximum event duration
An interaction consists of multiple events of different durations. This measurement is based on the longest duration in the group.
Total event duration
This is the sum of the duration of all events.
FID may disappear?
FID may remain part of Core Web Vitals, but what’s the point if the website gets a 100% score on it?
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For this reason, it is not unreasonable to assume that FID will disappear sometime in the relatively near future.
The Chrome team is soliciting feedback on different methods of measuring interaction latency. Now is the time to speak.
Citation
HTTPArchive Network Yearbook: CMS
