Do perfect Lighthouse scores mean the performance of your website is perfect? As it turns out, Lighthouse is influenced by a number of things that can be manipulated and bent to make sites seem more performant than they really are, as Salma Alam-Naylor demonstrates in several experiments.
Starting in March 2024, Interaction to Next Paint will formally replace First Input Delay as a Core Web Vital metric. Learn how the two metrics differ, why we needed a new way to measure interaction responsiveness, and how you can start optimizing the performance of your site now for a seamless transition to the latest Core Web Vital metric.
Take a closer look at how various performance tools audit and report on performance metrics, such as core web vitals. Geoff Graham answers a set of common questions that pop up during performance audits.
Having access to a free reporting tool like Lighthouse in DevTools is a great start for diagnosing performance issues by identifying bottlenecks on the main thread. Even better are paid tools like [SpeedCurve](https://www.speedcurve.com/?utm source=smashingmag&utm medium=magazine&utm campaign=sm7 2023&utm id=sm7 2023&utm term=sm7 2023) to dig deeper into the data for more targeted insights and to produce visual reports to help make a case for performance improvements for your team and other stakeholders.