The Next tag is our Early Adopter program for the AB Tasty tag. It is a specific and early branch, where we put our latest optimizations and features that have been internally tested and validated but that are awaiting a more global validation (early adopter feedback) before being deployed to all users.
By joining the program, you will be able to test our latest improvements and new features instantly. Your dashboard will remain the same and you will keep using AB Tasty in exactly the same way. You might notice minor changes in the way of QAing your campaigns or investigating the tag on your website. However, if you aren’t a tech-aware user, you shouldn’t spot any differences.
Joining the program
In the Framework section of your AB Tasty account, you can see which branch of the tag you are on. We currently have 4 branches running:
- Latest: the public and most used branch, referred to as the “default” branch;
- Next: the early and advanced branch you are able to test;
- Deprecated: an old branch that will be unsupported soon;
- Unstable: an experimental and internal branch. On a normal use, you will never see this branch.
If your tag is set on Latest, you are free to join the Next program by clicking Learn more and Join now from the popin. However, you can’t join the program on your own if you are on the Deprecated or Unstable branch.
After joining the Next program, you must refresh your tag to push the modifications live. Otherwise, the changes will be pending.
Leaving the program
From the Framework section, if you are already on the Next tag, you can choose to instantly leave the program by clicking Leave program. You will be able to rejoin the program anytime.
After leaving the program, you must also refresh your tag to push the modifications live. Otherwise, the change will be pending and you will still be operating on Next.
Note that since this version of Next is impacting the cache mechanism, switching back to Latest might cause an additional delay in your ability to push new modifications to your website. This delay can go up to 24 hours.
Functioning
Using this program is safe. However, keep in mind that it is an early version for a reason. It has been tested internally, as well as with several customers that have already joined the Next program. We can’t assume we have been running this tag on 100% of the possible configurations and environments. This means you might fall under a configuration that breaks our tag, even though it shouldn’t happen. The worst-case scenario is that your campaigns and data collection will no longer work. By joining the Next program, you accept the tiny possibility that something may go wrong.
In any case, you can switch back to the Latest tag at any time without notifying us (but we expect your feedback!). Just remember to always refresh your tag after you make a change. Due to the nature of the change in Next 3, you should be aware that an additional delay will apply before being able to push new changes in production when switching back to Latest. This delay can go up to 24 hours.
Enhanced cache mechanism
The tag is now massively using the browser cache to drastically reduce the amount of data being downloaded from our CDN, reducing the latency and thus increasing page speed and improving our impact on your performance metrics, but also decreasing the power consumption of our tag.
All files are now cached, for up to 12 months, and regular update checks are made in the background without being render-blocking. If a change in your campaigns or account configuration is detected, it will be downloaded at a low priority in an asynchronous mode.
This means that after the first page, which is the only moment when a new visitor has to download the full bundle, the AB Tasty tag is read directly from memory instead of doing regular polls to the network, reducing its loading time to a few milliseconds.
Limitations
The first page is not impacted by the improvement, as the full bundle still needs to be downloaded if there are no cached files. The impact is only visible on the 2+ pages. If you run a performance audit, it is most likely that you will run it without any cache and the improvement won't be noticeable.
Also, as the updates are made in the background, it is most likely that you will experience an additional delay when pushing new modifications in your AB Tasty account. This delay is limited to the new page refresh only.
Further iterations of the Next branch
Other iterations planned for the future. This version is already the third iteration of our Next program. It is most likely that a fourth iteration will come after we decide to close this one.
When closing the second iteration, we decided to automatically migrate back all Next users to Latest. We will keep you posted about the end of the current iteration.