I made a version of the Dawn Theme without jquery

Themes
1

Hello all. I noticed that the Dawn theme was a bit slow to load for me, so I dug into the codebase. I ended up removing jquery and rewriting the javascript (copy-pasting from the Edition theme, to be honest), removing a few js libraries, stripping search out completely, removing the headerbar, and removing some CSS. I also optimised font loading. Loading times have improved quite a bit.

If someone wants to check it out, here is the link to the source. Here is a link to the site I use it on. I absolutely love this theme, and wanted to share my changes with the community. If someone is a bit OCD about site loading time and wants to use Dawn, they might consider using this fork.

Original theme:

image
image1716×550 34.2 KB

Modified Theme:

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image1718×543 30.9 KB

6 Likes
2

keep it up :+1:t2:

3

OK, that’s quite a difference. Really nice work! I’m using Dawn myself on Ghost Pro. Sadly, I’m currently running on their lowest plans so I can’t install any other theme then the ones already build in. :slightly_frowning_face:
Maybe they are implementing these improvements in the original theme one day?

What tool did you use for the performance report?

4

I used Measure page quality to check loading performance. And to be honest, I think the themes, once made, are basically kept in maintenance mode, so I wouldn’t hold my breath for them to change it substantially any time soon.