Ibai

Page speed aside, there was really no need to remove the core CSS from the templates. I agree that most users do not need it so they would of course simply ignore it; but the ones that do need it had the option to view, understand, learn and modify if they wanted to.
CSS is basically harmless and any issue that may come up we could just restore the file to the original version so this shouldn't strain IPS support.
Basically: us self-hosters are already getting hammered with the cloud only features. There's no need to remove features too now.

I like to think of it as F for Fantastic. 
 
Complex layouts with user generated content on a platform that can manage text (forums) as well as gallery (large images) will never get an A from those automated tools. 
 
As I’ve mentioned multiple times, I can optimise the CSS for this site but it would break your theme. We want to reduce the footprint of our framework CSS but it is not a simple undertaking and will break every single theme on every single Invision community. 

That is why I also wrote that the optimization process is individual, because each site uses different resources. I tried some time ago to derive generally valid content CSS rules... But after going into serious details, I became convinced that this is impossible.
Maybe if you create a basic css framework, with the most used rules, and have that file loaded via CDN with a single request, and all the rest of the css content in an install package, it will speed up mobile especially.

It's quite tricky because we do have a lot of styles that could be potentially used, but are often not until a widget is added, for example. Tying specific styles to specific widgets is quite difficult.

However, we acknowledge that our CSS could be rebuilt and be more efficient. It's something we really want to fix.

I completely understand your position @Adlago. You are a power user with a very focused goal of attaining the highest possible pagespeed/CWV/lighthouse scores possible. This means spending days and weeks optimising CSS, JS, etc often making large amounts of changes and sacrifices to achieve your goal of a good rating from a brief audit with an automated tool.

That is what you want to do, and I understand that.

From my position, we want to deliver a very broad community platform that is capable of being used by a vast and diverse array of communities.

For example, these are both Invision Communities running the same major version.

 

Both of these websites use our base CSS. Now, if you wanted to make the Squarespace one super fast, you'd go in and remove virtually anything that is a colour, remove loads of the ipsBadge classes you won't need, all the various type styles and so on and save hundreds of bytes in the process. However, you could not then take that optimised CSS and make it work for the second example which has different needs.
My point here is that we cannot really create a very optimised set of CSS files for every potential community. What we want to do is overhaul the CSS to produce a much smaller footprint and be much more extensible but we don't have a magic wand. We have a finite number of developers with a growing list of things to do. Overhauling CSS means essentially starting a new theme from scratch and that means booking out our UI team for months.

Project planning is tough, but it's on the list to do.

In my opinion, what you are writing is about a qualitatively new version - for example, 5.0 with preset new parameters.
With small changes and bans in the existing versions of the 4.x family, you will only make things worse for your customers and probably turn many of them away....
Your idea is good, even avant-garde, but it will work only with a qualitatively new version - not with the 4.x family

For my part, I would be happy if all CSS were readable, as before, for reference even if not editable. The latest patch shows modified CSS and allows reverts of existing changes but unchanged CSS are still hidden and therefore, you can't use search.
It was so useful being able to search for something (even something as simple as a colour) and then quickly locate the code, copy it and then paste a modded version into custom CSS.

Yes, I have done similar optimization on various large (with many users) sites. For each such site, it takes about 2 weeks of work - but after that, all Web Vitals are within normal limits. Here is an example from such a site

This is not going to help.
I do something else in the direction of optimizing the CSS when loading.
1. My custom css has another purpose - I have created new templates - first I load custom css - in this my custom css, I have created a copy of almost every css file, but in these copies content is only of used rules.
2. My main css (framework.css etc) is loaded from another template, following a template for custom css - so the browser extracts the used rules very quickly and starts displaying the page, it turned out that all the other rules from the main css are loaded quickly, but they do not affect the delay.
3. My real custom css I load inline css before closing head.
In this way, I achieve up to 95 points score for mobile maximum and 80 minimum, depending on server load.
This construction works optimally. I still have some work to do, but apparently I'll have to use designer mode, which will slow down my time a lot.

95% of your base CSS is not used effectively - and every online test shows it. Especially when a site uses external ads.
Also, there are enough ways to combine effectively used css into one css - and notice, without changing the structure of your development - just a small change in loading. Etc.
Any such change, even a small one, involves direct css editing... And a lot of testing and analysis... But it's worth the effort... This can't be done in designer mode, only in direct editing... It's individual for each site, each site uses different resources and requires different tweaks to improve... Etc.
With these restrictions you are now "scoring an own goal"...
PS. See your site

All this slows down the loading of the site, especially on mobile. With direct editing CSS and ...one more thing, a solution to this delay is found...

Anyone who doesn't know what they are doing should find an acquaintance and pay themselves, or create an additional paid job for you. You can mention it in your product's terms of use. Which will justify additional maintenance payments on your support through no fault of your own.
But depriving the entire community because of units that give you headaches - that's complete stupidity...

There are already several threads devoted to this topic. @Matt wrote that blocking the editing of CSS engine files is the first step towards rewriting CSS.

Hello, 🙂
Suggestion : remove the "and 6 more" in the menus and show all items in the menu instead, or allow to choose.
Hiding the menu items (and thus the content) with a "And 6 more" is making things complicated for the user and is not attractive.
Keeping things simple for the user is important.
Thank you. 🙂

I don't know about you, but I'm wondering if it's perhaps overdue that IPS got stuck into a huge performance and speed based review and implement it in the next medium sized update! I think a lot has changed in recent years in relation to site performance. Core Vitals in Lighthouse as many admins will be aware are now much more important in terms of SEO ranking, performance isn't just for the obsessed enthusiasts any longer!
Google Search Console tells me that on one of my IPS Communities, my Mobile Pagespeed test result sucks, just 28%-30% at present, so I started checking a few things under the hood. I like to keep my sites high performing, so I was quite surprised it was so low. 
One thing I found out in minutes looking at the optimisation list and then checking my IPS configuration is that if you have the IPS Lazy Loading feature enabled, it doesn't apply to your uploaded images in Advertisements or Post Author Member Group Icons. Both are shown in my topic view so I get scored down on mobile in particular.
I think it's now time that Native Lazy Loading was offered, either as a choice or as the default if enabled.
Also where possible IPS should support Local WebP conversion via the Task Manager.
I know some of us sometimes bash IPS for not delivering more obvious updates like Gallery, Blog, Pages and Commerce improvements for the sake of instead quick things like disabling features but IPS4 is quite a huge behemoth these days, no matter your pricey VPS, CiC, use of Redis pools etc.
More performance improvements I'd like to see considered include...
(Now admittedly I'm basing this list on a similar big audit that another website framework I invested in conducted and implemented last year. These are the options you can now simply toggle off/on as a result in their Dashboard. They can make a huge difference to bloat.)
Dynamic Modular Framework
Enable this to allow the IPS Framework to only load code that are actually used on the page, and process the logic for the features in actual use.
Dynamic CSS
Dynamic CSS could greatly reduce CSS file size by dynamically generating only the styles and assets necessary for the features and modules you actually use. This eliminates most if not all CSS file bloat and greatly improves load times.
Dynamic Icons
Font Awesome is 2 generations behind. The FA4 icon font could be broken up into various subsets. These subsets are loaded only when needed based on the modules and features used on each page. If you need access to the entire icon font on all pages (for example, if you are using lots of FA icons in a custom theme or want to allow members to insert them via the post editor), then you could disable this option and load the entire icon font library on all pages.
Load Dynamic Stylesheet In-line
This option dequeues the IPS style.css file and prints the needed contents in-line. This removes a render blocking request and improves the PageSpeed scores of individual pages. However, it also prevents the style.css file from being cached. Since the stylesheet is often smaller when dynamic or critical, it could be recommended to keep this option enabled. Accepted there are some potential CSP-related security concerns with inline CSS an or JS.
Critical CSS
Critical CSS greatly improves website load times and Google PageSpeed scores by deferring non-critical styles and eliminating render-blocking CSS requests. Critical CSS often covers what most users see when first loading the page, so called 'above the fold' content.
Critical Threshold Height
When Critical CSS is enabled, IPS would determine an "above the fold threshold" and defer all styles for elements below the fold. However, this threshold is just a estimate and can vary on different devices. Increasing threshold height will deffer fewer styles, resulting in slightly slower load times but less of a chance for Cumulative Layout Shifts to occur. If you are experiencing CLS issues you can then increase or lower the threshold 'height' via a drop-down low, medium, high setting.
Dynamic JavaScript Libraries
When enabled, IPS would only load external JavaScript libraries when they are needed by a specific sections or modules on the page. This removes unused JavaScript from the main scripts bundle and improves load times.
Improve Google Fonts Loading
Enable caching of Google Fonts and load them inline. This reduces render-blocking requests and improves page load times. Also presents an opportunity to switch to the Google Fonts API, to offer a dynamic dropdown list to allow admin to choose from all available GFonts. The Task Manager could check for and cache new versions of selected fonts in use weekly.
Limit Google Fonts Support For Legacy Browsers
Enabling this option will lower the size of Google Fonts and improve load times, however it will limit Google Fonts support in some very old browsers. You can turn this off to increase support for losers insisting on their older insecure browsers at a slight cost to performance.
Defer jQuery And jQuery Migrate
When possible, jQuery and jQuery Migrate could be moved to the body to speed up load times. If a third party plugin registers jQuery as a dependency, it would be moved back to the head.
Enqueue jQuery Compatibility Script
Some third party scripts may be incorrectly enqueued without declaring jQuery as dependency. If jQuery is deferred, these scripts could break. If you are experiencing console errors after enabling the "Defer jQuery And jQuery Migrate" option, you can enable this option, which will load an additional compatibility script that will attempt to solve the issue. (You can turn this feature off if everything is working fine without it).
Defer Additional Third Party Scripts
Warning: This can cause JavaScript errors in some cases and should be used with care. When enabled, scripts registered by plugins and themes will be deferred to improve performance and jQuery will always be loaded in the body.

When are we ever going to get an update to Font Awesome, built into the core? Seems like it's overdue now and could easily be added in an update? Is it due to licensing costs or something?

I've always had very bad CPM with adsense so I see no change, very poor results.

upvote for scheduled forum posts!

Support Topic for the app Live Messenger
    
Live Messenger for Invision Community. This app is not an alternative to the standard IPS Messenger, but a handy add-on. Live Messenger was created to relieve communication with other users. Loading and sending new messages is happens without reloading the pages. The main advantage of this application is that you can quickly write or read a personal message on any community page.
Features
Quick Buttons: create pm, open messenger and show/hide Live Messenger window. Quick access to recent private messages. Quick access to the private conversation. Messages in a minimal design, without distracting design elements. Select the groups that can use Live Messenger. PM read/unread icon. Quick message sending.

A fix for this has been submitted for review and should be in the 4.7.1 release unless there are issues in testing.

Next week!? Yesterday would be preferred 🤣. 

Why next year. Can you tell apple we need it next week.

Yes 🙂
 
https://www.macrumors.com/2022/06/06/ios-16-support-web-push-notifications/
 

It seems it’s going to happen “soon”😍
 
https://www.apple.com/ios/ios-16-preview/features/

Very important feature! Would save us a lot of work! We would have a lot of creative possibilities that don't work now.

And the idea with Pages (by Sonja) is unfortunately too complicated for me, I'm not a technician.
 
Dear IPS team, I would celebrate if you could do it! 🥳

Thanks, I have fixed this for an upcoming release.