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<h1>Improving Tufte CSS for Jekyll</h1>
<p>2019-11-01</p>
<p>After creating the ET-Jekyll theme almost two years ago, I finally got around to revamping the structure and improving a lot of minor performance issues. Items that have been surely needing of updates for the last couple of years.</p>
<h2>Introductions</h2>
<p>I've always been a sucker for Edward Tufte's incredibly simple, yet powerful design work used in his books and handout projects. So, in 2018 I released a Tufte CSS inspired Jekyll theme for the open source community. I called it <a href="https://et-jekyll.netlify.com">ET-Jekyll</a> (so original, I know). Tufte CSS was a great starting point for my Jekyll theme, but there were areas I thought could use some minor improvements.</p>
<p>Feel free to read all the details on the design here: <a href="https://et-jekyll.netlify.com/et-jekyll-theme/">ET-Jekyll theme details</a></p>
<h2>Minor Fixes One Year Later</h2>
<p>When I finally circled back to this project recently, I noticed some minor issues that could be improved right away with little to no effort. Let's see the changes made at a glance:</p>
<ul>
<li>Sidenote, marginnote and figure element restyling (flexbox)</li>
<li>Table styling fixes (right alignment issues)</li>
<li>Switch MathJax over to SVG embeds (performance fixes)</li>
<li>Simplify HTML skeleton of main pages, remove overkill classes</li>
<li>Remove lazysizes.js to save on load times</li>
<li>Fallback on font-display for font loading</li>
<li>Inline all CSS for faster initial paint</li>
<li>Minor link :hover coloring (accessibility)</li>
<li>Add missing image link on example page</li>
<li>Update details post structure</li>
</ul>
<p>You can view all the updates in more detail <a href="https://github.com/bradleytaunt/ET-Jekyll/commit/254f9e8f28764c9525ba7405bbbfa18a3867d241">here</a>.</p>
<p><strong>So what did this accomplish?</strong> Let's break it down below.</p>
<h2>First Contentful Paint & Input Delay</h2>
<p>The new improvements have netted the theme a savings of 300ms on first paint and reduced the input delay by 150ms. Small wins - but wins nonetheless since every millisecond counts.</p>
<p><figure>
<img src="/public/images/tufte-first-paint.webp" alt="First paint comparison" />
<figcaption>First contentful paint savings: 300ms (<a href="/public/images/tufte-first-paint.webp">direct link to image)</a></figcaption>
</figure></p>
<p><figure>
<img src="/public/images/tufte-input-delay.webp" alt="Input delay comparison" />
<figcaption>Reduction in input delay: 370ms down to 220ms (<a href="/public/images/tufte-input-delay.webp">direct link to image</a>)</figcaption>
</figure></p>
<h2>Fixing Render Blocking Items</h2>
<p>The original theme reported a few items that were slowing down the initial render for the end-users:</p>
<table>
<tr><th>URL </th><th>Size (KB) </th><th>Savings (ms) </th></tr>
<tr><td>/css/style.css </td><td>2.0 </td><td>150 </td></tr>
<tr><td>/lazysizes@4.0.1/lazysizes.js </td><td>5.0 </td><td>960 </td></tr>
<tr><td>MathJax.js?config=TeX-MML-AM<em></em>HTML </td><td>18.0 </td><td>1,260 </td></tr>
</table><p>These items were resolved by:</p>
<ul>
<li>Rendering all styling inline (therefore removing the extra HTTP request)</li>
<li>Removing the lazysizes library altogether (browsers plan to support lazy loading natively in the future)
<ul>
<li>The future plan is to integrate something like Cloudinary for out-of-the-box image processing</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Switch over MathJax to render equations as embedded SVGs (saves on bandwidth rendering an entire extra typeface)</li>
</ul>
<h2>Lighthouse Numbers</h2>
<p>Though it might not look like much, the updated theme receives a 4-point boost to its performance rating during a Lighthouse audit. Having a perfect score would be even better, but I can settle for 2-points under (for now).</p>
<h4>Old Version</h4>
<table>
<tr><th>Performance </th><th>Accessibility </th><th>Best Practices </th><th>SEO </th></tr>
<tr><td>94 </td><td>100 </td><td>100 </td><td>100 </td></tr>
</table><h4>New Version</h4>
<table>
<tr><th>Performance </th><th>Accessibility </th><th>Best Practices </th><th>SEO </th></tr>
<tr><td>98 </td><td>100 </td><td>100 </td><td>100 </td></tr>
</table><h2>Final Thoughts</h2>
<p>This project could still use some more fine-tuning, but for now I'm fairly happy with the outcome. Even the smallest boost in performance and rendering time makes me feel like I accomplished something worthwhile. </p>
<p>Please don't hesitate to suggest features or point out any issues you happen to stumble across if you plan to use ET-Jekyll. Thanks for reading!</p>
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