14 DAY TRIAL // Speed is obviously a major theme at Google. The company is veritably obsessed with speed and for good reason, on the web it's one of the most important elements of a site. But in order to optimize a website you first have to know how slow it is, which is where the Page Speed line of tools from Google comes in.
And now that Google has launched a Page Speed Online API, which enables developers to integrate the tool into their own projects, it's easier than ever to get an accurate assessment of the performance of a website.
"Today, as part of Google I/O, we are excited to introduce the Page Speed Online API as part of the Google APIs. With this API, developers now have the ability to integrate performance analysis very simply in their command-line tools and web performance dashboards," Andrew Oates and Richard Rabbat from the Page Speed Team wrote.
The Page Speed team had been working on revamping the testing suite and creating an unified software development kit for it. This enabled the team to expand the suite to a lot more places.
First came the Google Chrome Page Speed extension to complement the Firefox addon. Soon after, Google also launched Page Speed Online, a website which runs the same tests as the extensions but which offers a lot more flexibility.
After the website launched, developers wanting to integrate the functionality into their tools asked Google for a Page Speed API and Google was happy to oblige.
The API offers all of the functionality that Page Speed Online does. You can also specify whether you want the analysis to focus on what mobile users see or the regular website. The API is also provided in over 40 languages, so ti can be integrated into a variety of apps.