Related links


Marc Laporte wrote:

Norm Daoust (http://www.normandaoust.ca) brought this to my attention:

Thirteen Simple Rules for Speeding Up Your Web Site
http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html

And the video:
http://video.yahoo.com/video/play?vid=1040890

The gist of it is that some low-tech easy stuff can be done to improve
user experience. For example, moving the javascript to the bottom of the
page. Here is an excerpt of rule #6:

" 6: Put Scripts at the Bottom
Rule 5 described how stylesheets near the bottom of the page prohibit
progressive rendering, and how moving them to the document HEAD
eliminates the problem. Scripts (external JavaScript files) pose a
similar problem, but the solution is just the opposite: it's better to
move scripts from the top to as low in the page as possible. One reason
is to enable progressive rendering, but another is to achieve greater
download parallelization. With stylesheets, progressive rendering is
blocked until all stylesheets have been downloaded. That's why it's best
to move stylesheets to the document HEAD, so they get downloaded first
and rendering isn't blocked. With scripts, progressive rendering is
blocked for all content below the script. Moving scripts as low in the
page as possible means there's more content above the script that is
rendered sooner."

Another quote:
"It turns out that most of web page performance is affected by front-end
engineering, that is, the user interface design and development."

So I tested the yslow plugin for Firebug (itself a plugin for Firefox).
http://developer.yahoo.com/yslow/

The results are below. There is some low-hanging fruit to be picked. 😊

http://tiki.org/tiki-index.php?page=home (1.10)
B 1. Make fewer HTTP requests
F 2. Use a CDN
F 3. Add an Expires header
F 4. Gzip components
A 5. Put CSS at the top
C 6. Move scripts to the bottom
A 7. Avoid CSS expressions
n/a 8. Make JS and CSS external
A 9. Reduce DNS lookups
B 10. Minify JS
A 11. Avoid redirects
A 12. Remove duplicate scripts
F 13. Configure ETags

http://doc.tiki.org/tiki-index.php (1.9 with custom theme)
F 1. Make fewer HTTP requests
F 2. Use a CDN
F 3. Add an Expires header
F 4. Gzip components
A 5. Put CSS at the top
B 6. Move scripts to the bottom
A 7. Avoid CSS expressions
n/a 8. Make JS and CSS external
A 9. Reduce DNS lookups
B 10. Minify JS
A 11. Avoid redirects
A 12. Remove duplicate scripts
F 13. Configure ETags

http://themes.tiki.org/tiki-index.php (1.9 with tikineat.css theme)
B 1. Make fewer HTTP requests
F 2. Use a CDN
F 3. Add an Expires header
F 4. Gzip components
A 5. Put CSS at the top
C 6. Move scripts to the bottom
A 7. Avoid CSS expressions
n/a 8. Make JS and CSS external
A 9. Reduce DNS lookups
B 10. Minify JS
A 11. Avoid redirects
A 12. Remove duplicate scripts
F 13. Configure ETags


Franck Martin, who lives in the Fiji Islands (where Internet access is
much slower/expensive than in Europe or North America) was reporting
some performance issues.

According to my tests on themes.tiki.org, the css & js files are not
gzipped.

http://themes.tiki.org/lib/phplayers/layerstreemenu.css

http://themes.tiki.org/styles/transitions/1.8to1.9.css

http://themes.tiki.org/lib/phplayers/libjs/layersmenu-library.js

http://themes.tiki.org/lib/phplayers/libjs/layersmenu.js

http://themes.tiki.org/lib/phplayers/libjs/layerstreemenu-cookies.js