Performance

4

PHP Intermediate

400-Byte Image Previews: Blur-Up Placeholders with PHP GD

The gray-box loading experience becomes a soft preview of the real image - generated at upload with GD, inlined as a data URI, crossfaded away on load.

May 30, 2026 3 min 79 Read →

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PHP Advanced

OPcache Is the Free 2x Speedup You Haven't Configured

PHP recompiles every file on every request unless OPcache says otherwise - and the default settings leave real performance on the table. Five ini lines, measurable wins.

Apr 7, 2026 3 min 274 Read →

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PHP Advanced

Protected Downloads That Don't Melt PHP: X-Sendfile and X-Accel-Redirect

Streaming big files through readfile ties up a PHP worker per download. The offload headers let PHP do the auth check, then hand the actual bytes back to the web server.

Apr 2, 2026 2 min 510 Read →

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PHP Advanced

Serve 304s from PHP: Conditional GETs for Dynamic Content

Browsers are begging to skip downloads they already have - your PHP just never answers. ETag and If-Modified-Since handling turns repeat views into empty 304 responses.

Mar 28, 2026 3 min 315 Read →

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PHP Advanced

PHP Has WeakMap Too - and It Fixes Per-Object Caching

Caching computed data per object with static arrays pins those objects in memory forever - a leak with a cache's haircut. PHP 8's WeakMap caches without owning.

Feb 20, 2026 2 min 435 Read →

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CSS Advanced

Scroll-Driven Animations: Progress Bars and Reveals Without JS

animation-timeline: scroll() binds any CSS animation to scroll position - reading progress bars, parallax, scroll reveals - running off the main thread entirely.

Nov 2, 2025 2 min 264 Read →

A

CSS Beginner

aspect-ratio Killed the Padding-Top Hack

padding-top: 56.25% wrapped in a positioned div was how we faked 16:9 boxes for fifteen years. One property replaces the whole contraption - and prevents layout shift while it's at it.

Aug 20, 2025 2 min 996 Read →

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JavaScript Advanced

Measure Real User Performance with PerformanceObserver

Lighthouse tells you about your machine. PerformanceObserver tells you about your users - long tasks, slow interactions and layout shifts, from the field, in a few lines.

Apr 26, 2025 2 min 1,344 Read →

D

JavaScript Intermediate

DocumentFragment, insertAdjacentHTML, replaceChildren: Fast DOM in 2026

innerHTML += in a loop is quadratic destruction. The platform has three precise tools for bulk DOM work, and knowing which to grab is most of the performance.

Apr 11, 2025 2 min 2,246 Read →

F

JavaScript Intermediate

fetch() With a Deadline: AbortSignal.timeout and Friends

fetch waits forever by default. One static method gives every request a timeout, and combining signals cancels stale searches the moment the user keeps typing.

Apr 4, 2025 2 min 1,899 Read →

R

JavaScript Intermediate

ResizeObserver: Components That Respond to Their Own Size

Window resize listeners cannot see a sidebar collapsing or a panel being dragged wider. ResizeObserver watches the element itself - the JS half of container-based design.

Mar 16, 2025 2 min 526 Read →

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JavaScript Intermediate

Lazy Sequences with Generators: Compute Only What You Use

Generators pause between values, which makes infinite sequences, cheap ID factories and stop-early pipelines natural - no arrays, no wasted work.

Feb 13, 2025 1 min 3,065 Read →