Web Performance

One of the fun things about Velocity is all the great tools that people unveil over the course of the conference. Here are three that I've checked out so far and liked. If you have any to recommend, let me know in the comments.

"Vous êtes donc les bienvenus pour critiquer, compléter ou amender la future check-list Opquast Webperf."

A free tutorial to SQL indexing and SQL tuning for developers: It avoids unnecessary details about database internals.

Scripts tiers & appels induits

Parlons un peu de contenus tiers, et plus particulièrement de scripts tiers. Allons, allons, ne me dites pas que vous ne savez pas de quoi je parle... Le bouton "J'aime" de Facebook ? Le bouton "Google +1" ? Le code javascript de Google Analytics ou de Xiti ?

Thursday, May 31, 2012, we delivered the Windows 8 Release Preview and the Sixth IE10 Platform Preview. Windows 8 includes one HTML5 browsing engine that powers both browsing experiences (Metro style and desktop) as well as Metro style applications that use HTML5 and JavaScript.

SPDY is awesome. It's the first real upgrade to HTTP in 10+ years, it tackles high latency mobile networks performance issues and it makes the web more secure. SPDY is different than HTTP in many ways, but its primary value comes from being able to multiplex many requests/responses from client to server over a single (or few) TCP connections.

Depending on whom you ask, the ideal page load can be 100 milliseconds, 400 milliseconds, 2 seconds... you get the picture. In our industry, we talk a lot about big, hairy, audacious performance goals, but what about the other end of the spectrum: the performance poverty line?

"Web FontFonts speak many languages, but most of the time you only need a select few. Removing the letters you don't need can greatly reduce the font file size to make your websites faster, optimize bandwidth usage, and reduce high-traffic costs. "

Speed matters online. Study after study has shown that even 100 millisecond delays in load times negatively impact user experience and conversions. So it's no wonder that e-commerce experiences are particularly susceptible to performance as these recent bits of data illustrate. The average Internet connection speed around the world was 2.3 Mbps by the end of 2011.

There was a time when doing a Website Load Test for a client using a Content Distribution Network (CDN) was an infrequent activity, but these days it's a common occurrence. There are more CDN suppliers of course, the newer ones such as MaxCDN, the traditional big names like Akamai and LimeLight, and some Datacentres such as UKFast offer CDN services directly to clients themselves.

This extension measures page load time and displays it in the toolbar. Web Timing API is used for precise measurement (Google Chrome version 6+ required).