HearthPwn Site Update - Performance Fixes Round One
Fight! Actually, don't do that, please don't do that.
Earlier today we deployed our first update of the new year to HearthPwn with browser performance in mind. Site performance has been a large hurdle for us, and we've been working hard to examine where the issues are and how we can best solve them.
These fixes are by no means the end, we're going to continue evaluating performance issues on the site and making improvements as time goes on. We want everyone to have a great experience here and can't thank you enough for your continued feedback.
The Changelog
- New social sharing buttons.
- The old buttons on the homepage could cause browser hangs.
- Now you can click on the dedicated share button to choose the networks you want to post to.
- SWFObject has been.. removed!
- We don't actually need this.
- It was loading on every page and some users would even see it loading as an icon in the corner. Sorry about that.
- TinyMCE, our post editor:
- This used to load on every single page whether you needed it or not. Not anymore!
- On pages where it does load, it's been improved.
- Collapsible Elements, have improved performance.
- Front page widget is less heavy.
- We loaded this a couple of times more than we needed to due to some bugs, that's no longer an issue.
- A few JS libraries have been removed. They were bandaids to give us features some browsers didn't support - they do now!
- Made improvements to the fixedCardListing function used on deck pages to cause less issues.
- Automatically updating timers on the site have been improved.
- Forum-specific code no longer loads on every page.
- The user is online animation on profiles which caused lag has been fixed.
- Several issues with reflow have been fixed.
- Fixed an issue where you weren't able to update your account information.
How You Feelin' Mon?
Have you noticed any improvements to site performance while browsing today? We've created a poll and ask that you leave your mark on it. Also, please leave us a comment below to let us know about your experiences - we'll be reading them all.
Extra: Ask the Hearthstone Devs Anything
Ben and Dean are going to be doing a livestreamed developer Q&A this Friday and we've been asked to forward on any questions you may have. We're collecting them in this dedicated forum thread, so head on over and leave us some of your questions to hand off.
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Posted Jan 13, 2017 (Gadgetzan)I think that black lives matters!
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Posted Jan 12, 2017 (Gadgetzan)Still quite slow on mobile, sadly. However, on desktop, performance has definitely improved, especially when it comes to deck pages and the forums - the two biggest offenders in the past for me.
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Posted Jan 12, 2017 (Gadgetzan)At first I picked the second option, but I can see the deck list section loading a lot faster now. It's still a bit slow compared to other sites. This is the best Hearthstone site so I wish it would also be the fastest.
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Posted Jan 11, 2017 (Gadgetzan)I still get some pretty hefty lag in the post reply input window. Especially when removing text. Not sure what's up with that.
(Using latest stable Firefox.)
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Posted Jan 11, 2017 (Gadgetzan)I saw some strange thing at a random forum thread's "niceness" counter:
I think it should display something else.
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Posted Jan 11, 2017 (Gadgetzan)It's WAY faster. Nice work.
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Posted Jan 11, 2017 (Gadgetzan)The only difference I see is the SHARE button which actually seems useless.
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Posted Jan 11, 2017 (Gadgetzan)Thanks!
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Posted Jan 11, 2017 (Gadgetzan)Good job dev
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Posted Jan 11, 2017 (Gadgetzan)Our achievement trophies are still not shown under avatar in the forum...
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Posted Jan 11, 2017 (Gadgetzan)It's better, and I'm glad you guys are working on it. Regardless of what happened in the past, it's a good thing that you guys are acknowledging the issue now and are taking steps to correct some of the mistakes that were made from the earlier builds.
It is worth pointing out, though, that even a reduction in load time by half is still going to be annoying when the load times average around 10 to 15 seconds. In fact, that's a pretty good representation of what it really was, because now it does seem to be down to 5 to 10 seconds. So good job on the progress and please keep working on it.
Personally, I have to switch to Chrome every time I want to browse the site, which is annoying for somebody who prefers Firefox for everything else. Even then, navigation is still pretty clunky and hangy, but at least you're not driven insane by having to wait 10 to 15 seconds for each new page to load.
I think it probably discourages audience retention, especially for your regular visitors. I've become accustomed to browsing this site a certain way, because of the issues. For example, I won't just casually click on inter-site links as much as I will for other websites, because I know my browser is going to freeze every time I do (more likely with FF, when I just come to the site for one thing, or to check in). It discourages liberal clicking, which is basically the one thing that's most important to every website.
But anyway, thanks for finally respecting your readership enough to actually acknowledge the issue, as well as the work you've done on it so far. There is definitely a noticeable improvement, but the standard of quality should be higher.
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Posted Jan 11, 2017 (Gadgetzan)Thanks for your hard work and improving the site!
Still found a small bug with the comment voting:
breakdown was +1/-1
Edit: Browser was current Chrome
Edit2: Thanks to the guy downvoting this comment, now it's visible here ;)
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Posted Jan 11, 2017 (Gadgetzan)-
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Posted Jan 11, 2017 (Gadgetzan)For me, scrolling on this site has always been and still is poor - laggy and stuttering - for the first 5-10 seconds until the content is loaded. This is eliminated if I disable javascript. But if I do, some site features do not work. I'm on Chrome. Javascript in Chrome in general does not work smooth on some sites, for me at least. Tried different versions of chrome, including beta, both on my work and home PC. Also tried different extensions to make the scrolling smoother or disabling most of extensions altogether - not much of a difference. However, on Edge for example, javascript works much faster and does not hamper the scrolling until a site is being loaded.
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Posted Jan 11, 2017 (Gadgetzan)Definitely the site got faster. But My Collection page is still very slow. Also I would like to see standard/wild collection counters on the collection stats.
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Posted Jan 11, 2017 (Gadgetzan)I noticed a difference on my PC but it was not that bad before, I guess I got used to it. It's still a pain in the arse on my very old netbook. Well, only sites with a plain theme works smoothly. Other than that, it's just bad to browse on it.
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Posted Jan 11, 2017 (Gadgetzan)Still my upvotes and downvotes are not displaying until I refresh the page or click on the total number.
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Posted Jan 11, 2017 (Gadgetzan)-
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Posted Jan 11, 2017 (Gadgetzan)Firstly I picked 2nd option, then reloaded page few times and it's like 3 times faster than before.
THAT'S INCREDIBLE
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Posted Jan 10, 2017 (Gadgetzan)Still not recieving credit for visting with a premium account achievement.