Very strange, patches hosted on Drupal.org can be applied by composer with no problems, but a patch from a local directory on my Windows system failed.

I used Winmerge to produce a patchfile, included it in composer.json and the result was always "could not apply patch"

composer -v update

produced the result "patch is not a recognized internal or external command"

filefield_paths module is very convenient for improving SEO for pictures uploaded in bulk.

https://www.drupal.org/project/filefield_paths

the module won't work correctly on Windows and needs a patch:

https://www.drupal.org/files/issues/2021-08-25/fix-windows-backslash_2858308_21_0.patch

use the dev-1.x version and apply the patch via composer:

        "drupal/filefield_paths": "^1.x-dev@dev",

then

found this here:
https://www.tomato-elephant-studio.com/blog/converting-menu-items-font-awesome-icons-drupal-8-menu

I want to preserve this Drupal 9 trick incase it disappears.

If you have already have fontawesome in your theme, like I have in D8W3CSS custom subtheme, you don't need to install fontawesome, you just need to add this menu preprocess function to your themename.theme file:

use Drupal\Core\Render\Markup;

/**
 * Implements template_preprocess_menu().
 */

Drupal core uses the same TWIG template for all instances of a menu. bummer.

Luckily, KristianKaa added this neat piece of code:

/**
 * Implements hook_preprocess_block().
 */
function mymodule_preprocess_block(&$variables) {
  $variables['content']['#attributes']['block'] =    $variables['attributes']['id'];
}

I'm fine-tuning a theme using Lighthouse and one error that kept coming back was 

"Ensure text remains visible during webfont load"
and then
"Specify `@font-display` when defining custom fonts in your theme"

if using local fonts, this is easy, just add font-display:swap to your css.

if using font libraries, this is different. For Google fonts, it can be easily achieved by adding "&display:swap" at the end of the URI in the theme's libraries.yml file

lately I've been toying around some more to put together a high performance drupal website. now I'm working on the Cumulative Layout Shift issue, which stems from pictures that don't have their dimensions in the img or picture tag. Also, lazy loading in core seems to depend on that. Exploring aspect ratio as a possible solution. Also looking at modularizing bootstrap css. Also question of how to use media library pictures.
I've had enough for today, my head feels too full, so I'll just drop some links here for me to work on it later:

Some links:

Download and install from this site:

https://nodejs.org/en/download/

followed all steps, powershell windows stays open for a long time with nothing happening.

... waiting ... I closed wamp64 server to see if it helps...

3 minutes later, powershell window comes to life and finishes installation. hm.

also installs a ton of other stuff, such as:
- chocolatey (?)
- python
- visualstudio build tools
 

Run command in the same directory as the composer.json file is located

composer update drupal/core "drupal/core-*" --with-all-dependencies

Okay, discovered this by chance today.

I wanted to go and update this Drupal 9 site, core and modules, did a backup, logged in to SSH, tried "composer update", and dang, error, CLI runs 7.2 but 7.3 is needed.

okay, went to the Plesk hosting control panel to check if I could tweak the CLI PHP version, and then I saw in my domain, a new icon: "PHP composer"

intrigued, clicked on it, and lo and behold, it recognized my composer installation of Drupal 9, all modules, identified needed updates and even gives me the option to modify my composer.json

Excellent short and easy writeup here:

https://dev.to/saschaeggi/how-to-serve-webp-images-with-a-drupal-8-drupal-9-site-10eg