Exploration of content-visibility CSS property

The content-visibility property provides control over whether elements are rendered or not. Some rendering steps can be skipped for elements that are not yet needed by an user to improve performance. I want to explore a range of scenarios to see the true effect on performance.

If you want to learn how to use content-visibility, you can read the accompanying article.

Run the examples

I used vite to run this as a mini-website. Just install the dependency (npm install) and run vite.

Performance auditing

I deployed this as a website to Netlify to audit the pages for a typical environment. I performed the audit using Chrome DevTools v116 in incognito mode. I used an older laptop -- a Lenovo T460. AFAIK hardware and network issues will affect results. I ran all the scenarios in this repo in a single session using the same conditions.

Example 1 - Landing page

This is a tasteful landing page for the artist Angèle, designed/coded by Rafaela Lucas.

It is of typical size with 5 major sections. The main navigation menu is hidden always and can be opened via a hamburger menu. There is some JavaScript to make a slideshow widget as part of the hero section.

I think it is a good candidate for ascertaining the impact of content-visibility on a typical webpage.

Use case A: Applying content-visibility to a hidden section

The website navigation section (main navigation) is hidden by default. You must click on the hamburger menu to open it.

Scenarios:

• 1: Default style.
• A2: Nav main menu has content-visibility:auto applied to it.
• A3: Nav main menu with content-visibility:auto and content-intrinsic-size: 100vw 100vh; specified.
• A4: Nav main menu with content-visibility:hidden specified. Switches value to content-visibility:visible when opened.

Name	Scenario	Loading	Scripting	Rendering	Painting	System	Idle	Total
1	Default	21	6	114	30	178	4608	4957
A2	Nav main menu has content-visibility:auto applied to it	34	7	181	82	212	4479	4995
A3	Nav main menu with content-visibility:auto and content-intrinsic-size: 100vw 100vh; specified.	22	6	106	22	128	4715	4999
A4	Nav main menu with content-visibility:hidden specified.	30	7	144	21	155	4752	5109

Conclusion

Based on these scenarios, we can conclude that you can achieve a small gain in performance when you use content-visibility:auto along with content-intrinsic-size on a hidden element like this. It is probably not worth pursuing this type of marginal gain, unless you want things really optimized. However, if you are using display:none to hide the menu, you can consider content-visibility as an alternative.

Use Case B - Apply content-visibility to offscreen sections

There are three major sections that are off-screen initially. Let's apply content-visibility:auto to them.

.videos,
.album,
.follow {
	content-visibility: auto;
}

Scenarios:

• 1: Default style.
• B2: Lower 3 sections have content-visibility:auto applied.
• B3: Lower 3 sections have content-visibility:auto and contain-intrinsic-size specified.
• B4: Lower 3 sections have content-visibility:hidden applied.
• B5: Lower 3 sections have content-visibility:hidden and contain-intrinsic-size specified.
• B6: Apply content-visibility:auto to hero section to see if a penalty is incurred. Don't repeat this!!

#	Scenario	Loading	Scripting	Rendering	Painting	System	Idle	Total
1	Default	21	6	114	30	178	4608	4957
B2	Lower 3 sections have content-visibility:auto applied.	19	5	61	11	145	4744	4985
B3	Lower 3 sections have content-visibility:auto and contain-intrinsic-size specified.	23	5	64	16	137	4673	4918
B4	Lower 3 sections have content-visibility:hidden applied.	18	4	69	22	135	4748	4996
B5	Lower 3 sections have content-visibility:hidden and contain-intrinsic-size specified.	22	5	100	40	145	4880	5192
B6	Apply content-visibility:auto to hero section to see if a penalty is incurred. Don't repeat this!!	32	5	103	22	156	4542	4860

Conclusion

There was a significant improvement in rendering and painting when content-visibility:auto was used, in the region of 40% (see scenario B2 in table above). When I added contain-intrinsic-size, performance also improved sigificatntly (see scenario B3 in table). However, it was marginally worse than using content-visibility:auto on its own (scenario B2). It is not apparent if contain-intrinsic-size is benefical or not, so it is best to test both scenarios.

Applying content-visibility:auto to the hero section led to a slightly longer loading time down for the page. I am not sure if the penalty would be more significant under different conditions. My guess is that it is best to avoid this scenario generally.

Example 2 - Travel blog post

This is the demo discussed in the web.dev article - content-visibility: the new CSS property that boosts your rendering performance. It is a travel blog that contains a set of stories, pictures, some descriptive text, and includes some random iframes!

Scenarios explored

1. Default style.
2. With content-visibility:auto applied to a few sections.

Performance audit results

The results I found were more modest than the results of the web.dev team. For the second scenario, I observed a rendering time of 117ms, they observed a rendering time of 23ms. I do not have an explanation for the variance.

#	Scenario	Loading	Scripting	Rendering	Painting	System	Idle	Total
1	Default style	36	4	237	277	548	8888	9990
2	With content-visibility:auto applied to a few sections	66	2	117	157	421	9459	10222