3rdParty.io is a new tool I’ve released to evangelize best-practices for third-party scripts and libraries:
3rdParty.io is a YSlow-like developer tool that’s designed to run best-practice checklists on third-party scripts and libraries. While YSlow and other great synthetic testing tools (such as Chrome’s Lighthouse) perform audits on entire websites, 3rdParty.io focuses on individual third-party JavaScript files, validating that they won’t slow down your site or cause compatibility or security concerns.
What exactly is a third party? Any JavaScript script, library, widget, snippet, tag, ad, analytics, CSS, font, or resource that you include in your site that comes from somewhere else.
Third-party scripts have the ability to break your site, cause performance problems, leave you vulnerable, and cost you money.
There are many great providers of third-party scripts out there who are following best practices to ensure that their content is secure and performant. However, not every third-party has followed best practices, and these mistakes can wreak havoc on your site.
3rdParty.io’s goals are to monitor popular third-party scripts, promote best practices, and to ensure that content providers can feel comfortable including third-party scripts and libraries in their site without worry.
There’s an existing library of third-parties that are being constantly validated (with many more being included soon). You can click on any of them to get a breakdown of what they’re doing right, and how they can improve:
Each check (there are about 60 today) can be expanded to get details of why the check is important, and how it can be fixed:
You can run any third-party JavaScript library through the site via the home page. Simply paste the JavaScript URL into the Check! bar:
Once you hit Check!, we will run an automated checkup within a few moments:
It’s still a work-in-progress, with a lot still to be done: adding more checks, making it more reliable, loading more third-parties into the database. I would love your feedback!
Please check out the tool at 3rdParty.io!