speedline

Background

The Navigation Timing API provides useful data that can be used to measure the performance of a website. Unfortunately this API has never been good at capturing the actual user experience.

The Speed Index, introduced by WebpageTest.org, aims to solve this issue. It measures how fast the page content is visually displayed. The current implementation is based on the Visual Progress from Video Capture calculation method described on the Speed Index page. The visual progress is calculated by comparing the distance between the histogram of the current frame and the final frame.

Speedline also calculates the perceptual speed index, based on the same principal as the original speed index, but it computes the visual progression between frames using the SSIM instead of the histogram distance.

CLI

Install

$ npm install -g speedline

Usage

Note: You should enable the screenshot options before recording the timeline.

$ speedline --help

  Usage
    $ speedline <timeline> [options]

  Options
    --pretty  Pretty print the output
    --fast    Skip parsing frames between similar ones
                Disclaimer: may result in different metrics due to skipped frames

  Examples
    $ speedline ./timeline.json

By default the CLI will output the same output as visual metrics. You can use the --pretty option if you want to have the histogram.

Module

Install

$ npm install --save speedline

Usage

const speedline = require('speedline');

speedline('./timeline').then(results => {
  console.log('Speed Index value:', results.speedIndex);
});

API

speedline(timeline [, opts])

• (string | object[]) timeline
• (object) opts

Returns a (Promise) resolving with an object containing:

• beginning (number) - Recording start timestamp
• end (number) - Recording end timestamp
• speedIndex (number) - speed index value.
• perceptualSpeedIndex (number) - perceptual speed index value.
• first (number) - duration before the first visual change in ms.
• complete (number) - duration before the last visual change in ms.
• duration (number) - timeline recording duration in ms.
• frames (Frame[]) - array of all the frames extracted from the timeline.

timeline parameter:

• string - the parameter represents the location of the of file containing the timeline.
• array - the parameter represents the traceEvents content of the timeline file.

opts parameter:

• timeOrigin: Provides the baseline timeStamp, typically navigationStart. Must be a monotonic clock timestamp that matches the trace. E.g. speedline('trace.json', {timeOrigin: 103205446186})
• fastMode: If the elapsed time and difference in similarity between two screenshots are small, fastMode will skip decoding and evaluating the frames between them.

Frame

Object representing a single screenshot.

• frame.getHistogram(): (number[][]) - returns the frame histogram. Note that light pixels informations are removed from the histogram, for better speed index calculation accuracy.
• frame.getTimeStamp(): (number) - return the frame timestamp.
• frame.getImage(): (Buffer) - return the frame content.
• frame.getProgress(): (number) - return the frame visual progress.
• frame.getPerceptualProgress(): (number) - return the frame perceptual visual progress.

License

MIT © Pierre-Marie Dartus