README.md

Chrome Speed Metrics

[TOC]

Mission

The Chrome Speed Metrics team aims to quantify users' experience of the web to provide Chrome engineers and web developers the metrics, insights, and incentives they need to improve it. We aim to:

• Quantify web UX via a high quality set of UX metrics which Chrome devs align on.
• Expose these metrics consistently to Chrome and Web devs, in the lab and the wild.
• Analyze these metrics, producing actionable reports driving our UX efforts.
• Own implementation for these metrics for TBMv2, UMA/UKM, and web perf APIs.

Goals

Quantify Users’ Experience of the Web

Chrome needs a small, consistent set of high quality user experience metrics. Chrome Speed Metrics is responsible for authoring reference implementations of these metrics implemented using Trace Based Metrics v2 (TBMv2) in tracing/metrics. These reference implementations will often require adding C++ instrumentation. Some metrics work will also be driven by more focused metrics teams, such as the work on Frame Throughput. Chrome Speed Metrics also owns UMA/UKM metrics, and speed metrics related Web Perf APIs.

The wider set of folks involved in defining these metrics will include:

• Area domain experts.
• Focused metrics teams.
• Devtools folks.
• DevX, documenting what these metrics mean for external developers.
• Occasional other experts (e.g., UMA folks).

Expose Consistent Metrics Everywhere

Chrome Speed Metrics is responsible for ensuring that our core metrics are exposed everywhere. This includes collaborating with devtools, lighthouse, etc. to make sure our metrics are easy to expose, and are exposed effectively.

Analyze Chrome Performance, providing data to drive our performance efforts

Metrics aren’t useful if no one looks at them. Chrome Speed Metrics performs detailed analysis on our key metrics and breakdown metrics, providing actionable reports on how Chrome performs in the lab and in the wild. These reports are used to guide regular decision making processes as part of Chrome’s planning cycle, as well as to inspire Chrome engineers with concrete ideas for how to improve Chrome’s UX.

Own Core Metrics

The Chrome Speed Metrics team will gradually gain ownership of tracing/metrics, and will be responsible for the long term code health of this directory. We’re also ramping up ownership in the Web Perf API space.

Contact information

• Email: speed-metrics-dev@chromium.org
• Tech lead: sullivan@chromium.org
• File a bug:
  • For issues related to web performance APIs, file a bug here
  • For other kinds of issues, file a bug here

APIs we own

• Element Timing
• Event Timing
• HR Time
• Largest Contentful Paint
• Layout Instability
• Longtasks
• We own some of the implementation details of Navigation Timing
• We are ramping up on Page Visibility
• Paint Timing
• Performance Timeline
• We own some of the implementation details of Resource Timing
• User Timing

Web performance objectives

• See our web performance objectives.

Metrics changelog

We realize it's important to keep developers on the loop regarding important changes to our metric definitions. For this reason, we have created a metrics changelog which will be updated over time.

User Docs

• Metrics for web developers.
• Properties of a good metric
• Survey of current metrics

Talks

• Lessons learned from performance monitoring in Chrome, by Annie Sullivan.
• Shipping a performance API on Chromium, by Nicolás Peña Moreno.
• Understanding Cumulative Layout Shift, by Annie Sullivan and Steve Kobes.