On 20 October we rebuilt the Kayts home page: a film that grows to fill the screen as you scroll, cards for the five models, a Research example that plays when it comes into view. On a desktop with a strong graphics card it was smooth. On an ordinary laptop it stuttered. This is how we found out why, and what we changed.
Measuring instead of guessing
A smooth page draws a new frame about every 16 milliseconds. A frame that takes longer than 33 ms is a visible hitch. We drove Chrome through its DevTools Protocol, scrolled the home page with 60 turns of the mouse wheel, and counted the frames that took longer than that. To see what a weaker laptop sees, we switched off the graphics card and slowed the processor four times.
Then we took the page apart one piece at a time: the coloured aurora behind it, the frosted top bar, the film's animation, smooth scrolling. None of them changed the count much. Switching off one thing did: the field of small dots behind the page.
The cause: 1,650 dots, drawn one by one
The dot field draws a slow wave of the brand's colours through a grid of about 1,650 dots, 30 times a second, with a glow that follows the pointer. Each dot was its own drawing call, and the field kept drawing while the page scrolled, competing with the scroll, the film and the video for the same moments of the processor.
Our measurement through the Chrome DevTools Protocol, 21 October 2026.
Show the data as a table
| Value | |
|---|---|
| Before the change | 75–86 |
| After the change | 26 |
| Without the dot field at all | 9 |
The change
- One path for the quiet dots. Most dots are not lit by the wave at any moment. They now go into a single path, drawn with one call instead of one call per dot.
- Still while you scroll. The field holds its last frame while the page scrolls and for 150 ms after, so the scroll and the film get the processor. You don't see it stop: while you scroll, your eye is on the page.
The page looks the same as before; we compared screenshots. The long frames went from 75–86 to 26. The dots still cost something (9 without them at all), and we think that is a fair price for the look. The same field runs behind the sign-in page, which got the same change.
What we take from it
A fast computer hides slow code: on the machine we build on, the page never stuttered. And measuring paid off: none of the four things we suspected first made a difference.
