Benchmark: matchMedia vs clientWidth

HTML Preparation code:

<script src="https://code.jquery.com/jquery-3.1.1.min.js"></script>
<style>
  #before:before {
  	content: "a";
 	 display: none;
  }
  @media(min-width: 200px) {
  	#body {
  		background: red;
  	content: "b";
  	}
  }
  @media(min-width: 600px) {
  	#body {
  		background: blue;
  	content: "c";
  	}
  }
  @media(min-width: 1000px) {
  	#body {
  		background: yellow;
  	content: "d";
  	}
  }
</style>
<div id="body">
</div>

Tests:

clientWidth
document.documentElement.clientWidth;
matchMedia
window.matchMedia("(min-width: 400px)").matches;
Get Background Colour from Jquery
$("#body").css('background-color');
before
window.getComputedStyle(document.getElementById('body'), ':before').getPropertyValue('content').replace(/\"/g, '');

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
clientWidth
matchMedia
Get Background Colour from Jquery
before

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model llama3.2:3b, generated 23 days ago):

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

Let's break down the provided JSON and explain what's being tested, compared, and discussed.

**Benchmark Overview**

The benchmark measures the performance of three different approaches to check if the screen width is above a certain threshold:

1. `document.documentElement.clientWidth`: directly accessing the client width of the document element.
2. `window.matchMedia("min-width: 400px").matches`: using the `matchMedia` API to test for a minimum width.
3. `$("#body").css('background-color');`: using jQuery to get the background color of an element (not directly testing screen width, but rather an indirect way to check it).

**Test Cases**

Each test case is defined in the "Benchmark Definition" field and includes:

1. A JavaScript code snippet that performs the desired operation.
2. A descriptive name for the test.

The test cases are executed multiple times, and their execution rates (number of executions per second) are reported as part of the benchmark result.

**Comparing Approaches**

The three approaches are compared to determine which one is the fastest in terms of execution rate.

**Pros and Cons of Each Approach:**

1. **`document.documentElement.clientWidth`**:
	* Pros: simple, direct access to client width.
	* Cons: might not work well with complex layouts or multiple elements with non-zero widths.
2. **`window.matchMedia("min-width: 400px").matches`**:
	* Pros: flexible and works well with complex layouts. Can be used to test for multiple conditions.
	* Cons: requires the match media API, which might not be supported in older browsers.
3. **`$("#body").css('background-color');`**:
	* Pros: indirect way to check screen width, using a library (jQuery).
	* Cons: slower due to the overhead of jQuery and its CSS manipulation methods.

**Library Used**

In this benchmark, jQuery is used in one of the test cases (`"Get Background Colour from Jquery"`). jQuery provides a convenient API for manipulating HTML elements, including getting their background color. However, using such libraries can add overhead and might not be necessary for simple performance comparisons.

**Special JS Features or Syntax**

There are no special JavaScript features or syntax used in this benchmark that aren't widely available in modern browsers.

**Other Alternatives**

If you want to test alternative approaches, here are a few options:

* Use other libraries like `requestAnimationFrame` to measure execution time.
* Test different screen resolution and orientation settings using browser APIs.
* Experiment with Web Workers or async/await for parallelism.

Keep in mind that these alternatives might not be directly comparable to the original benchmark and should be tested separately.

Latest run results:

Run details: (Test run date: one year ago)

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.15; rv:109.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/116.0

Browser/OS: Firefox 116 on Mac OS X 10.15

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
clientWidth	3288765.0 Ops/sec
matchMedia	597496.8 Ops/sec
Get Background Colour from Jquery	483765.3 Ops/sec
before	135221.7 Ops/sec

Related benchmarks:

matchMedia vs clientWidth (version: 3)

Comparing performance of: clientWidth vs matchMedia vs Get Background Colour from Jquery vs before

Created: 7 years ago by: Registered User

Jump to the latest result

clientWidth

matchMedia

Get Background Colour from Jquery

before

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Experimental features:

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model llama3.2:3b, generated 23 days ago):