Prototyping Platform Packs for Lighthouse
TL;DR: Platform Packs is a new Lighthouse feature that is currently under development, and we would love to hear your feedback!
By auditing for performance, accessibility and other best practices, Lighthouse provides developers with important guidance that they can use to improve their web pages. Many developers, however, use different technologies to build their site (such as a CMS or JavaScript framework) and may need more specific advice.
Platform Packs is a feature that will extend Lighthouse to also include specific platform-based recommendations. Instead of only surfacing generalized advice, additional messages will be provided that explain how to address certain audits with platforms that have been detected to be used on a website.
The community will get to decide what the recommendations for different platforms should be. A separate repository has been created to consolidate ideas and a prototype of this feature can already be viewed with Lighthouse Viewer.
Which platforms will Lighthouse support?
We are starting with WordPress as our first prototype platform, and plan to expand the list in the future to other popular CMS and JavaScript frameworks (React, Angular, etc...).
How will this feature show up on my Lighthouse report?
There are two options that are being considered:
- Automatically detect which platforms are being used on a page (such as WordPress) and immediately surface additional platform-pack messages for applicable audits.
- Automatically detect which platforms are being is being used on a page (such as WordPress) and provide a toggle that allows the user to switch between a regular and an updated version of Lighthouse.
How will platform-specific descriptions be modified by the community?
We’re exploring options to enable anyone to recommend platform-specific recommendations in the near future. In the meantime, feel free to submit PRs directly to the Lighthouse Platform Packs repository or leave suggestions in this Google Sheet for WordPress.
Feedback
We would love to hear any feedback you may have:
- Which platforms should we prioritize in the future after WordPress?
- Do you have a preference for how this feature will show up on your Lighthouse report?
- Any other suggestions?
Leave a comment in this discussion issue if you have any thoughts.