The article recounts the author's experience with a sluggish Next.js app due to excessive JavaScript being loaded on the first page. Using Chrome DevTools, the author identified that over a megabyte of JavaScript was hindering performance, which negatively impacts the user experience. JavaScript requires intensive processing compared to other resources, making its size critical. To address this, the author utilized the Webpack Bundle Analyzer to diagnose the bundled assets, leading to a significant reduction of 500KB-1MB from the initial load. This demonstration highlights the importance of optimizing JavaScript for better performance in web applications.
I discovered the culprit: an avalanche of JavaScript being sent over the network on first load. This bloating was cutting 500KB-1MB from the initial experience.
JavaScript is expensive for browsers to handle... an intense process. In fact, byte for byte, JavaScript can be more taxing than images or CSS.
To get a closer look, I turned to the Webpack Bundle Analyzer... an interactive treemap that shows each file or module and how much space it takes.
I had to trim this fat... sending 500KB or 1MB of extra JavaScript can significantly slow down how quickly the page becomes usable.
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