In the Rigor Optimization product, you can view a historical archive of numerous performance metrics for a performance test over time including the best practices score, content size, and more in the Snapshot History view. This archive of data is automatically maintained as you continue to run new performance snapshots for any of your performance tests. No setup required.
Accessing Your Snapshot History
To access the Snapshot History view, visit the View Results page off the Rigor Optimization home page, then click the snapshot history link next to the performance test of interest.
Alternatively, you can also click Snapshot History directly from any existing snapshot as shown below.
Snapshot History Graphs
Within the Snapshot History view you’ll immediately see a detailed graph with numerous filtering options available for customization.
In addition to different available charts for selection, you can also customize the time range for available snapshots (based on when the snapshot was created) for display, as well as filter the results based on whether they apply to first party content, third party content, or both. All time ranges use the local timezone and locale settings configured for your Rigor Optimization user account.
Available Charts
The following charts are available for selection:
| Defects By Severity | The distinct number of defects, by severity, over time. Ideally you’ll want the number of higher severity defects to decrease over time. |
| Possible Savings |
This chart shows the original size of the selected content for each snapshot over time, as well as the potential size of all recommended lossy and lossless optimizations were applied. Think of this as the theoretical best case content size you could achieve for your existing content by fixing all the defects identified by Rigor Optimization. As your site becomes more optimized, the original size should decrease and move closer to the optimized size values. |
| Best Practices Score | The best practices score for each snapshot over time. The best practices score measures how well a site is implementing performance best practices, and how much potential there is to optimize its performance. This metric can not be filtered for first or third party content. Ideally you want your best practices score to increase over time. |
| Total Content Size | The total original size of all content over time, as well as how much of that original size was first party vs third party content. This chart is useful for monitoring how much of your content is pulled in from external third parties, such as ad providers or hosted javascript libraries. Ideally your overall and third party content size should decrease over time. |
| Content By Host | This chart totals all content identified by hostname over time. This is useful for spotting large external dependencies you may not be aware of, for example a large dependency on a particular CDN or font library. To keep this chart readable, only the top 30 hosts, sorted by size, will be displayed for each snapshot. |
| Content By Type | This chart totals your content by file type over time. For example total image size, total font size, etc. This is especially useful in monitoring your usage of media such as images and video, as well as dependencies on specific resource types like Javascript, CSS and Fonts. Ideally you want all sizes to decrease over time, but pay particular attention to images and video since those resources often offer the greatest optimization potential. |
| Resources Loaded | This chart shows the total number of requests made over time. Specifically, the number of first party requests, third party requests, and both. Generally (but not always) the less requests you make, the faster your site will load. |
Customizing Your Results
As mentioned above, you can further customize your results by date range and first vs. third party content in the chart filters. In addition, you can drag your mouse over any range in the chart to zoom in.
Click Reset Zoom to zoom back out.
You can also click on the chart legend to show or hide specific ranges. This is especially useful in the Content by Host chart where many ranges will be simultaneously displayed.
Use the Show All and Hide All links as a convenient shortcut to select or deselect all ranges.
Downloading charts
For convenience, a download image link is provided in the top-right corner of the snapshot history view. Simply click to download a PNG image version of the currently visible chart.
Custom Time Ranges and Paging
You can use the date picker to select pre-built ranges as well as a custom range of snapshots, all in the local time of your user account.
Use the previous and next buttons to page through your custom range. Each click will move the results up or down one-half the total selected range distance.
Sharing and Deep Linking
You may notice whenever you change any of the filter options for the charts, the URL in your browser will also change. This is called deep linking and means you can copy/paste the URL from your browser to preserve the exact chart and applied filters currently used. This is especially useful for sharing a link with your peers so they can see the exact chart you are viewing on their own local workstation, even at a later point in time.
The deep links will also preserve the exact selected time range at the point in time the URL was copied. So for example, if you selected the “Last 7 Days” date filter, the link will preserve the specific 7 day range at the point in time the URL was copied, rather then resetting to a new 7 day range at a later date. In other words, you should always see the same result every time you click the link, even if clicked several days later.
In addition to deep linking, you can click the Share button at the top-right corner of the page to generate a guest-accessible link. Share links allow access to this specific result even for people who do not have a login to the Rigor Optimization product. This is useful for sharing your results with others who may not be actively using the product. Users clicking share-links will have read only access, meaning they can not create or launch new performance snapshots, but they can view all the results from this page and all linked snapshots from this page. (They can not, however, view snapshots from other performance tests unless those are shared seperately).
Click to View Snapshot
You can click any point in the displayed chart to view the specific performance snapshot detail that generated that data point. These links will also work if accessed via share link.
Live Mode (Dashboard Mode)
Live Mode is a feature designed for those who like to view continuously updating dashboards on a dedicated display, for example in a DevOps team room. To enable Live Mode, simply click the Live Mode button in the chart button bar, and then optionally click the expander button in the top-right corner to expand the graph to full screen.
Alternatively, you can also apply custom sizing to the displayed chart using the splitter bar located below the charting area.
Once enabled, the currently selected chart will automatically update every 30 seconds. Only relative time ranges are allowed for selection in Live Mode, and live mode will always end at the current time. To suspect live mode, simply click the disable button in the chart button bar.
Live mode will also update the snapshot table results found below the charting area.
Snapshot List Updates
The snapshot list table has also been extended to show new data columns used in the charts, including Original Size, Lossy Optimized Size, Losslessly Optimized Size, and inline sparkline charts showing the defect counts by severity for each snapshot.
If Live Mode was enabled above, this table will also update with each refresh to the chart.