Perfecting Your Profiling

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One skill that will always be relevant is profiling. No matter the framework, no matter the version, at some point you will have to dive into why your application is not performing at its best. In this talk, we will show how you can use React Dev Tools alongside the standard Dev Tools to identify and resolve performance and memory issues. There are some hidden gems within Dev Tools profiling panel that goes beyond just measuring how much time is spent executing a function and we will discover them together including new features released this year.

This talk has been presented at React Advanced 2024, check out the latest edition of this React Conference.

FAQ

Chrome deprecated the Web Vitals extension and integrated its features into the Performance Panel, now called the real-time metrics view.

Profiling in development mode is important because React strips out the profiling capabilities in production to ensure applications run as fast as possible without the extra delays and work added by profiling.

The web.dev site is recommended as a comprehensive resource for articles and information related to web performance profiling.

The 'use deferred value' hook allows developers to defer non-critical value updates, enabling the browser to update and re-render smoothly, improving the user experience.

Developers can profile specific tasks by running them directly with Node using the '--inspect break' option, enabling them to dive into and debug tasks using Chrome's dedicated DevTools for Node processes.

Core Web Vitals are metrics important for improving SEO and user experience by measuring the performance of web applications, such as interaction to next paint.

The speaker's talk focuses on profiling, specifically using React DevTools and the Chrome DevTools Performance Panel, along with discussing the recent changes to the Web Vitals extension.

The speaker works at AGGrid and is involved with AGGrid and AGGcharts, which are React components for creating grids and charts in applications.

AGGrid and AGGcharts are React components that allow users to easily add grids and charts to their applications, providing beautiful visualizations with minimal effort.

Stephen Cooper
Stephen Cooper
29 min
25 Oct, 2024

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Video Summary and Transcription
A software engineer from AGGrid discusses profiling and optimization in React DevTools and Chrome DevTools. The React DevTools allow for analyzing and optimizing renders, and can help improve Core Web Vitals. Chrome DevTools provide in-depth performance analysis and optimization options. The engineer shares specific strategies for optimizing rendering, animation, and layout thrashing. They also discuss performance profiling and benchmark testing, as well as testing tools and the performance testing process. The speaker emphasizes the importance of exploring resources and metrics in Chrome DevTools.
Available in Español: Perfeccionando Tu Perfilado

1. Introduction to Profiling and React DevTools

Short description:

A bit about me. I've got four kids and two dogs. In my professional capacity, I work at AGGrid and we've got both AGGrid and AGGcharts now. So if you want to know more, come and speak to us at the booth. But I know why you're really here is to talk about profiling. So let's start with the React DevTools and the Web Vitals extension DevTools performance panel in Chrome.

A bit about me. I've got four kids and two dogs so profiling life is very important but unfortunately it doesn't seem like anyone's made like a DevTools for life. If you have or if that's your business idea, let me know. I'll be one of your beta testers.

But in my professional capacity I work at AGGrid and we've got both AGGrid and AGGcharts now. So these are React components you can drop into your application and everything's batteries included, you've got your grid, throw your data in, you've got your charts, and you can produce these beautiful visualizations with very little effort at all. So if you want to know more about that, come and speak to us at the booth.

But I know why you're really here is to talk about profiling. So this is going to be or this was the content of my talk until a few weeks ago. So I'm going to start with the React DevTools. We're going to look at the Web Vitals extension DevTools performance panel in Chrome and then I'm going to throw some quick fire hints at you from things that I've learned while profiling AGGrid.

2. Changes in Chrome and React DevTools

Short description:

Chrome deprecated the Web Vitals extension and moved it into the performance panel, now called the real-time metrics view. React DevTools is essential for profiling. Make sure your React version is recent and in development mode. React strips out profiling in production for optimal speed.

But as I said, this was the talk and then Chrome made a big update where they deprecated the Web Vitals extension and they've moved this into the performance panel and it's now called the real-time metrics view. So this is a really quite exciting change because it's bringing all this features and usability that I think was underrated and underused in the Web Vitals extension directly into your performance panel. And hopefully you'll see by the end of this talk just how valuable that information can be for you.

So first of all, the React DevTools. Now this says it's been downloaded 4 million times, so I'm guessing pretty much everyone here has got it downloaded. Yes, that's good. As many of you here have downloaded it using it. A little bit more quiet. So yeah, so once you've installed the extension you'll have this profiler and also a components option in your DevTools. So you can find it in there. You might run into this issue initially saying profiling is not supported. So make sure your version of React is recent enough and also that you're in development mode because you can't profile against production because this profiling inside of React adds extra delays and work. So React strips it out in production so that your apps are as fast as possible. So you're either going to be developing against React development mode, which you have to remember does additional checks, but then React does also have this dot profiling version of the code as well. So it doesn't do all the dev checks but it still has the profiler to give you the information.

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