Since Google has changed its rank computation to prioritize web sites designed for mobiles :

example of a 100% page speed for m.selectionnist.com

it’s time to change the paradigm.

Webapp design was before that event mostly driven on a design pattern that was similar to the IOS and Android app development, that is :

  • all the code for the “view” is in the client app,
  • asynchronous requests are made to the server to fetch the data (Ajax request in case of a webapp)

This kind of design pattern, that was also the case in hybrid apps, is not possible anymore since :

  • CSS from frameworks are too heavy to load, all the content above the fold should be available in only 2 HTTP round trips” (Google Page Speed).

  • Javascript is also too heavy, in particular when including other libraries, even when minified and compressed.

  • If we use non-blocking Javascript, that will be loaded later once the HTML is loaded, it will also require for the webapp a second HTTP call to request the data to display.

So, the only way to do that, is :

the server has to deliver the first data in the HTML for the URL it is requested, and the javascript, loaded asynchronously, will take over for navigation.

Eventually, it’s time to go one step further in the full-stack full JS (a unique language for front-end and back-end development) and the hybrid apps patterns (a unique code to program downloalable apps - IOS, Android - and webmobile apps) with this last requirement :

a unique code for server-side and client-side programming.

Such technologies to fullfill this requirement are based on NodeJS :

A first best practices required to enable this is :

  • to stop using jQuery because there is no DOM on server-side and jQuery code cannot be rendered on server-side.

  • avoid to save data in localstorage and favor cookies as much as possible, because cookies’data is accessible from client and server.

This website references a few other libraries on the subject.

We are impatient to see the next improvements in that field in the near future.