Understanding Resource Priorities

A presentation at SmashingConf Freiburg (Online) by Andy Davies

Have you ever looked at the Network Panel in DevTools, or a waterfall in WebPageTest and wondered what determines the order of the resources, and how you can influence it?

This talk explores how browsers prioritise resources, how some of them adjust for network conditions, what part servers play and how the decisions we make as developers influence their behaviour, and our visitors’ experience.

We’ll also dig into the tradeoffs and pitfalls that you may come across with tools and techniques such as JS bundlers and standards such as Resource Hints.