It’s been 7 months since the last post in my YSlow series. So why did I stop blogging about performance optimization? Well, actually there are two answers to that question. First is because of my passion for unit-testing, which I started blogging about at pretty much that time. Secondly, I have to admit that I… Read more »
Posts Categorized: Performance
YSlow rules #12 – Avoid redirects
A former college of mine told me, that he had founded “The association opposed the abandonment of PerformanceDude.com”. In order to make him happy, I thought that I would leave the wonderful world of unit testing for a moment, in the benefit of writing a performance related post We’ve reached YSlow rule number 12 – Avoid redirects. I… Read more »
YSlow rule #11 – Minify JavaScript and CSS
Way down the list of YSlow rules, we’ve reached rule number 11, which is important and a no-brainer to implement. The rule is titled “Minify JavaScript and CSS.” So what is minification, and why do we need it? Both JavaScript and CSS files are packed with unnessecary characters like spaces, comments, tabs, etc. Minification is… Read more »
Prerendering in Google Chrome
Google just introduced a new performance related feature in Google Chrome: Prerendering. The feature is pretty basic, but makes a big difference when using Google as your search engine. When searching, Chrome will start background-loading the first URL in the search result. If you choose to click the URL, the content will load instantly. You’ll… Read more »
YSlow rule #10 – Reduce DNS Lookups
Most of us (me included) don’t think much about the way DNS works. Browsers, on the other hand, use DNS pretty much every day. For the uninformed, I will start by explaining how DNS works. If you already know this, feel free to skip the following paragraph. As you know, all computers with a network… Read more »
YSlow rule #9 – Make JavaScript and CSS External
We’ve briefly touched this subject a number of times already. Making your JavaScript and CSS external simply means moving it from your HTML header to their own files, referenced as an external file in the header. So why does Yahoo think that this is a good idea? We’ve already discussed the possibility to cache resources… Read more »
Finally! Google makes a Page Speed API
A lot of new stuff is released by Google these days. The Google I/O conference typically means a bunch of new products and API’s and this year are no different. In regards to performance optimization, I was very happy to discover a new Page API earlier today. That’s right, folks! A new and shiny API,… Read more »
YSlow rule #8 – Avoid CSS Expressions
Time for another YSlow rule. This week we will be looking at rule number 8—avoid CSS expressions. My knowledge about CSS is very limited, and I’ve always seen CSS as a format for specifying style information rather than an actual programming language. It turns out that you can actually write JavaScript inside your CSS files…. Read more »
YSlow rule #6 and #7 – Put style sheets at the top and scripts at the bottom
This week I have chosen to combine rule numbers 6 and 7. Why? Because they focus on pretty much the same thing: where to put style sheet and script references. According to rule number 6, you should put all your styling in the head section of your HTML document. The YSlow documentation explains why. There’s… Read more »
Page Speed keeps evolving – meet Page Speed Online
Last week I blogged about Google making Page Speed available for Chrome users. This week Google surprises me again, by doing Page Speed Online. Page Speed Online is pretty much just an online edition of Page Speed for Firefox and Chrome. The funny thing is, that I just a couple of posts ago votes against… Read more »
