Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
What is Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)?
Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is an open-source framework created by Google and other technology firms to improve mobile web page performance and speed. It is intended to reduce loading time and improve the user experience for mobile users.
AMP employs AMP HTML, a stripped-down form of HTML that limits the usage of specific features and focuses on creating lightweight and fast-loading web pages. It also uses a restricted collection of performance-optimized JavaScript components known as AMP JS.
The primary goal of AMP is to shorten the time it abides for web pages to load on mobile devices by reducing the amount of data that must be downloaded and streamlining the rendering process. This is accomplished using various strategies, including pre-rendering, lazy image loading, and resource prioritizing.
AMP pages are cached and provided through Google’s AMP Cache or other content delivery networks (CDNs), improving their performance even more by delivering them from servers closer to the user.
The AMP framework is often used for news stories, blog entries, and other web pages with content. Its popularity stems from its potential to reduce mobile website load speeds, which may lead to greater user engagement, page visits, and search engine exposure.
It’s important to note that although AMP improves performance, it also has significant drawbacks. Compared to typical web pages, the stringent limits on HTML and JavaScript might result in losing design freedom and interaction. However, as time has passed, AMP has grown, and later versions have added additional capabilities and flexibility to solve these problems.
How does AMP work?
AMP improves the speed of mobile web pages by using various methods and improvements. Here’s a quick rundown of how AMP works:
1. HTML AMP
AMP HTML, a simplified form of HTML, is the cornerstone of AMP. It is a subset of regular HTML with extra tags and constraints to facilitate speedier rendering. Custom JavaScript, third-party scripts, and many CSS attributes are removed or limited in AMP HTML because they might create speed concerns. It also requires all external resources to be loaded asynchronously.
2. AMP JS
The framework provides a JavaScript library called AMP JS to guarantee the speedy and optimal loading of AMP sites. This module handles asynchronous resource loading, controls lazy image loading, and does additional optimizations. It also offers performance-oriented built-in components such as picture carousels and lightboxes.
3. Prioritization of Resources
AMP prioritizes loading critical resources to ensure that the website is accessible to visitors as soon as feasible. It employs a “priority loading” method to load key resources first, such as the primary content, CSS, and fonts. This prioritizing allows the visible sections of the website to be rendered rapidly while non-critical resources are loaded in the background.
The core components of AMP
Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) are made up of the following basic components:
1. AMP Cache
The AMP Cache is an optional feature that caches and delivers AMP pages. The AMP project or other content delivery networks (CDNs) often supply it. The cache speeds up the delivery of AMP pages by providing them from servers nearby to the user. It also guarantees that cached pages adhere to AMP specifications.
2. AMP Features
AMP contains a library of pre-built components for adding interactive features and functionality to AMP pages. These components are performance-optimized and follow the AMP requirements. Images, videos, carousels, lightboxes, forms, and social media embeds are examples of AMP components. They are intended to be efficient while retaining the fast-loading quality of AMP.
3. AMP Analytics
AMP has an analytics system that enables publishers to watch user interactions and collect statistics on the performance of AMP pages. Publishers may utilize the analytics component to understand better user behavior, track page visits, and track engagement metrics.
