14 DAY TRIAL // Google has provided an update to the PageSpeed Insights Chrome extension it introduced last year. PageSpeed 2.0 is a major revamp, the extension has been rewritten and, while it does pretty much the same thing, it's gotten several new features and capabilities.
One of big changes in the updated extension, now available in the Chrome Web Store, is that it's based on Native Client so it can run code that not only suggests things you can do to speed up your site, but also does some of the optimizations for you.
It also integrates tightly with the web developer tools already built into Google Chrome, so you'll know where to find it and how it works.
"PageSpeed Insights analyzes all aspects of a web page load and points out the specific things you can do to make your page faster," Google explained.
"For instance, PageSpeed Insights can inform you about an expensive JavaScript call that blocks the renderer for too long, remind you about that new photo on the front page of your web site that you might have forgotten to resize or optimize, or recommend changing the way you load third-party content so it no longer blocks the page load," it said.
PageSpeed Insights, formerly Page Speed is designed, as the name clearly suggests, to test loading speed and provide info on what components drag out the most and what could be done optimization-wise.
Google offers the technology in a number of ways, there's an website version, a Firefox one, and even an SDK and an API.
What's new in the latest update to the Chrome version is that the extension can now perform some optimizations for you. It can analyze and provide improved versions of any CSS, JavaScript and HTML code as well as optimize any image on your site.