# Stage 3 — Frontend Assets, JavaScript, CSS and Media Delivery

## 1. Scope and completion boundary

This stage covers storefront asset delivery, JavaScript/CSS loading, image loading, fonts, browser caching, and browser-facing regression checks. Backend architecture, database work, and Stage 4 work were not changed.

## 2. Frontend architecture audit

The active storefront uses the legacy `frontend/v2` public theme and Livewire full-page components. It loads jQuery, Bootstrap and `main.js` globally. The Vite configuration is retained for the older `frontend/assets` bundle; it was stale and did not previously build.

## 3. Asset audit findings

Before this stage, every storefront page loaded Slick (43.6 KiB CSS+JS), MagicZoom (114.2 KiB), and home animation/splitting assets (110.6 KiB), regardless of need. The head also loaded a second, remote jQuery 3.6.0 while the footer loaded local jQuery 3.7.1. Storefront SweetAlert had no caller.

## 4. JavaScript delivery changes

Removed the duplicate remote jQuery and unused storefront SweetAlert. Toast assets are now version-pinned and emitted only for responses with a success/error flash message. `main.js` now guards legacy Slick, WOW, and Splitting initializers, so missing page-specific libraries cannot cause runtime errors.

## 5. Page-specific resource loading

Home alone loads WOW, Splitting, and their CSS. Product pages alone load MagicZoom CSS/JS. Slick is no longer loaded because no rendered storefront element references it. Therefore non-home/non-product pages avoid about 268 KiB of uncompressed legacy theme assets before considering the eliminated external jQuery and SweetAlert requests.

## 6. CSS and critical rendering

The homepage hero’s inline sizing CSS remains intentionally: it reserves the above-the-fold hero area and prevents a render/CLS regression. Existing product cards reserve a 238 px thumbnail area. Added a small cached `performance.css` layer rather than rewriting vendor-minified icon CSS.

## 7. Image delivery, LCP, and CLS

The primary homepage banner and product image are eager, asynchronously decoded, and marked `fetchpriority="high"`. Secondary hero slides, gallery thumbnails, product cards, wishlists, blog lists/related content, footer logo, and the contact illustration lazy-load and decode asynchronously. Product-card and hero CSS already reserve media space.

All 56 uploaded image assets are WebP (3.36 MiB total). There are no pre-generated responsive size variants in the current media library, so no misleading same-file `srcset` was emitted. A future upload-time derivative pipeline is needed before truthful responsive `srcset`/`sizes` can be supplied.

## 8. Fonts, icons, and third parties

Added `font-display: swap` overrides for the active Line Awesome and Font Awesome faces, preferring WOFF2. The Google Tag Manager data layer integration remains unchanged. Toastr remains only for actual flash notifications; tracking and payment/cart Livewire code were not delayed.

## 9. DOM, Livewire, SEO, and accessibility

No large DOM or Livewire interaction was removed. Reactive shipping/filter controls remain live where they change data; form fields retain their existing action-driven behavior. Image alt text now falls back to product names in product galleries and cart summary, and the footer logo has descriptive text. Existing canonical, structured-data, and title/meta output were preserved.

## 10. Apache delivery rules

`public/.htaccess` now conditionally enables gzip/deflate for text-based responses. It applies a one-week browser cache to theme JS/CSS/fonts and a conservative one-day cache to mutable uploaded images. No immutable cache directive is used for non-fingerprinted legacy URLs.

## 11. Production build

Corrected the stale Vite input from nonexistent `public/frontend/assets/css/style.css` to existing `app.css`. Removed Linux-specific npm project settings that caused Windows npm warnings. `npm.cmd run build` now completes and produces the fingerprinted manifest in `public/build`.

Vite reports one non-fatal, legacy Owl Carousel reference: `owl.video.play.png` is absent and is left as a runtime URL. That legacy bundle is not currently rendered by the active v2 storefront.

## 12. Regression and browser validation

Validated live HTTP responses for `/`, `/shop`, and a product page. Home receives only its three visual-effect assets, product receives MagicZoom CSS/JS, and shop receives neither; storefront HTML contains one local jQuery, no remote jQuery, no SweetAlert, and no Slick. Headless Chrome found no JavaScript console errors on home, shop, and product pages at 1440×900 and 390×844. The admin Argon stylesheet remains HTTP 200 with `text/css`; Apache configuration reports `Syntax OK`.

## 13. Test results and known follow-up

`php artisan test` passed: 6 tests, 13 assertions. `php artisan config:cache`, `route:cache`, and `view:cache` all passed. npm reports 9 existing dependency advisories (2 moderate, 6 high, 1 critical); they were not auto-upgraded during this focused stage. No Lighthouse score was claimed because no controlled network/throttling benchmark was run.

## 14. Changed files and Stage 3 status

Changed: `resources/views/frontend/layouts/app.blade.php`, homepage/product/card/listing image templates, `public/frontend/v2/js/main.js`, new `public/frontend/v2/css/performance.css`, `public/.htaccess`, `vite.config.js`, and `.npmrc`. Production build output is intentionally ignored by Git. Stage 3 is complete; Stage 4 has not been started.
