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By Supporting Navigation Timing, Safari Has a Brighter Future

Mehdi Daoudi

Web performance optimization is a task that is quickly gaining momentum. DevOps professionals monitor web users’ experiences in an effort to find and fix performance problems that can ultimately cost their businesses significant revenue.

Real User Measurement (RUM) has been a go-to method for gaining insight as to how a site is performing at the last mile and whether end users encounter any errors or performance lags during their time on the site. Without the use of a Navigation Timing API, however, this insight is extremely shallow and leaves many stones unturned.

For this reason, one of the biggest gripes DevOps professionals have had with Apple’s Safari browser has been the absence of support for a Navigation Timing API. Finally, after years of complaints and even a signed petition, the latest beta release of Safari 8 (to be made available in both the upcoming Yosemite for Mac OS and on iOS) is now offering this missing functionality.

Thanks to a Navigation Timing API, collecting RUM data is done through JavaScript embedded on the webpage. Previously for older browsers (and until recently, Safari), Java-based RUM relied on the heuristic method of measuring page load times.

While other browsers were allowing you to gain insight into the various pieces that can effect page load time – DNS resolution, TCP Connection, Server Response, DOM timings, and more –the heuristic method was based on the time the user entered the page and the onload event. This method provides almost no insight into the specific causes of slowness.

With so many question marks in your data, there’s only so much optimizing that can be done to your site in order to create a better user experience. This lack of RUM data meant that businesses were able to see clearly into the user experiences on every major browser except Safari. Luckily the Safari-Navigation Timing drought is now over.

The importance of this release is game-changing for any business with an online presence because the Safari footprint is gigantic. It accounts for over a quarter of all internet traffic, but what’s even more impressive is that Safari owns almost 60 percent of mobile browser traffic. With the internet rapidly moving into the mobile realm, having the ability to collect data from such a large portion of your site’s traffic will likely have a major impact on the overall health of your business.

So as Safari begins to move on to its brighter future with support for Navigation Timing APIs, the DevOps community is in a much more advantageous position. Businesses around the world will now finally be able to catch a complete view of their sites’ performance, ultimately allowing errors and other performance issues to be found (and fixed) faster than ever.

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By Supporting Navigation Timing, Safari Has a Brighter Future

Mehdi Daoudi

Web performance optimization is a task that is quickly gaining momentum. DevOps professionals monitor web users’ experiences in an effort to find and fix performance problems that can ultimately cost their businesses significant revenue.

Real User Measurement (RUM) has been a go-to method for gaining insight as to how a site is performing at the last mile and whether end users encounter any errors or performance lags during their time on the site. Without the use of a Navigation Timing API, however, this insight is extremely shallow and leaves many stones unturned.

For this reason, one of the biggest gripes DevOps professionals have had with Apple’s Safari browser has been the absence of support for a Navigation Timing API. Finally, after years of complaints and even a signed petition, the latest beta release of Safari 8 (to be made available in both the upcoming Yosemite for Mac OS and on iOS) is now offering this missing functionality.

Thanks to a Navigation Timing API, collecting RUM data is done through JavaScript embedded on the webpage. Previously for older browsers (and until recently, Safari), Java-based RUM relied on the heuristic method of measuring page load times.

While other browsers were allowing you to gain insight into the various pieces that can effect page load time – DNS resolution, TCP Connection, Server Response, DOM timings, and more –the heuristic method was based on the time the user entered the page and the onload event. This method provides almost no insight into the specific causes of slowness.

With so many question marks in your data, there’s only so much optimizing that can be done to your site in order to create a better user experience. This lack of RUM data meant that businesses were able to see clearly into the user experiences on every major browser except Safari. Luckily the Safari-Navigation Timing drought is now over.

The importance of this release is game-changing for any business with an online presence because the Safari footprint is gigantic. It accounts for over a quarter of all internet traffic, but what’s even more impressive is that Safari owns almost 60 percent of mobile browser traffic. With the internet rapidly moving into the mobile realm, having the ability to collect data from such a large portion of your site’s traffic will likely have a major impact on the overall health of your business.

So as Safari begins to move on to its brighter future with support for Navigation Timing APIs, the DevOps community is in a much more advantageous position. Businesses around the world will now finally be able to catch a complete view of their sites’ performance, ultimately allowing errors and other performance issues to be found (and fixed) faster than ever.

APM

The Latest

64% of enterprise networking teams use internally developed software or scripts for network automation, but 61% of those teams spend six or more hours per week debugging and maintaining them, according to From Scripts to Platforms: Why Homegrown Tools Dominate Network Automation and How Vendors Can Help, my latest EMA report ...

Cloud computing has transformed how we build and scale software, but it has also quietly introduced one of the most persistent challenges in modern IT: cost visibility and control ... So why, after more than a decade of cloud adoption, are cloud costs still spiraling out of control? The answer lies not in tooling but in culture ...

CEOs are committed to advancing AI solutions across their organization even as they face challenges from accelerating technology adoption, according to the IBM CEO Study. The survey revealed that executive respondents expect the growth rate of AI investments to more than double in the next two years, and 61% confirm they are actively adopting AI agents today and preparing to implement them at scale ...

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IBM

 

A major architectural shift is underway across enterprise networks, according to a new global study from Cisco. As AI assistants, agents, and data-driven workloads reshape how work gets done, they're creating faster, more dynamic, more latency-sensitive, and more complex network traffic. Combined with the ubiquity of connected devices, 24/7 uptime demands, and intensifying security threats, these shifts are driving infrastructure to adapt and evolve ...

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The development of banking apps was supposed to provide users with convenience, control and piece of mind. However, for thousands of Halifax customers recently, a major mobile outage caused the exact opposite, leaving customers unable to check balances, or pay bills, sparking widespread frustration. This wasn't an isolated incident ... So why are these failures still happening? ...

Cyber threats are growing more sophisticated every day, and at their forefront are zero-day vulnerabilities. These elusive security gaps are exploited before a fix becomes available, making them among the most dangerous threats in today's digital landscape ... This guide will explore what these vulnerabilities are, how they work, why they pose such a significant threat, and how modern organizations can stay protected ...

The prevention of data center outages continues to be a strategic priority for data center owners and operators. Infrastructure equipment has improved, but the complexity of modern architectures and evolving external threats presents new risks that operators must actively manage, according to the Data Center Outage Analysis 2025 from Uptime Institute ...

As observability engineers, we navigate a sea of telemetry daily. We instrument our applications, configure collectors, and build dashboards, all in pursuit of understanding our complex distributed systems. Yet, amidst this flood of data, a critical question often remains unspoken, or at best, answered by gut feeling: "Is our telemetry actually good?" ... We're inviting you to participate in shaping a foundational element for better observability: the Instrumentation Score ...

We're inching ever closer toward a long-held goal: technology infrastructure that is so automated that it can protect itself. But as IT leaders aggressively employ automation across our enterprises, we need to continuously reassess what AI is ready to manage autonomously and what can not yet be trusted to algorithms ...

Much like a traditional factory turns raw materials into finished products, the AI factory turns vast datasets into actionable business outcomes through advanced models, inferences, and automation. From the earliest data inputs to the final token output, this process must be reliable, repeatable, and scalable. That requires industrializing the way AI is developed, deployed, and managed ...