A Question of Timing

The article discusses website performance measurement using TTFB (Time To First Byte) and tools like cURL and Chrome. It explains how to configure cURL to measure timings such as DNS lookup, connect, appconnect, pretransfer, start transfer, total time, and size of downloaded data. It also describes the W3C Resource Timing standard used by Chrome for measurements. The article highlights that while these measurements can help diagnose problems, they may not effectively reflect real user experience on a website. To measure actual user experience, it is necessary to consider factors like loading time for images, JavaScript, and styles, as well as taking measurements from representative locations of users accessing the site.